Breach of promise: Court makes married Kumasi man pay GH¢65,000 to longtime girlfriend

A married Kumasi businessman has been slapped with a GH¢65,000 judgment after a court found he strung along his mistress for six years with an empty promise of marriage, only to abandon her once she had sunk her own money into the house he gave her.

The Court of Appeal in Kumasi ruled against Mr Benjamin Yeboah Anokye in a case that has set tongues wagging across the region, ordering him to pay Ms Priscilla Atsu GH¢40,000 for breach of promise to marry, plus a further GH¢25,000 to reimburse the money she poured into renovating a property he had gifted her.

According to the facts presented in court, Anokye and Atsu were locked in a relationship between 2011 and 2017 that produced a son. During that time, Anokye reportedly relocated Atsu from Tamale to Kumasi and, in what she took as a sign of his commitment, gifted her a house. Atsu says she went so far as to perform the customary thanksgiving rites for the property, a gesture typically reserved for occasions of real significance in Ghanaian tradition.

Central to her case was the claim that Anokye repeatedly promised to marry her, a promise she says never materialised. Anokye pushed back hard against the allegations, arguing he could never have promised marriage because he was already married under the Ordinance. It was a defence apparently built on the idea that an existing marriage nullified any obligation or any claim arising from the relationship.

The court wasn’t persuaded. Judges rejected his denial and sided firmly with Atsu, ordering him to make good on both fronts: compensation for the broken promise itself, and reimbursement for the sweat equity she had put into a home she believed was truly hers.

The ruling lands squarely in a conversation many Ghanaians are already having about the legal weight of promises made in long-term relationships outside marriage, and what recourse partners have when those promises collapse. For Atsu, it’s vindication after years in a relationship that cost her a move across the country, a child, and until now, recognition in the eyes of the law.