Ghana is not a Section 44A reciprocating territory
India's Section 44A of the Code of Civil Procedure allows money decrees from a short list of
reciprocating territories to be directly executed in India without a fresh suit. That list -- the
United Kingdom, Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, New Zealand, the Cook Islands and
Niue, the Trust Territories of Western Samoa, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Aden, and the UAE --
does not include Ghana, consistent with every other country this platform has found on this point except
the UAE. This platform confirmed this via consensus of secondary legal-commentary sources, though it did
not locate a single consolidated primary Gazette compilation during this research.
The Section 13 route for enforcing a Ghana family-court decree
Because Ghana is not a reciprocating territory, a maintenance, divorce-settlement, or other money
decree obtained from a Ghanaian court cannot simply be filed for direct execution in an Indian court.
Instead, the decree-holder must file a fresh civil suit in India under Section 13 of the Code of Civil
Procedure, treating the Ghanaian judgment as evidence -- the suit is subject to the conclusiveness
exceptions set out in Section 13 (for example, whether the Ghanaian court had proper jurisdiction, and
whether the proceedings were conducted in accordance with natural justice).
Ghana's own plural family-law framework
Separately from the enforcement question, Ghana itself operates a plural family-law framework not
unlike its plural succession-law system -- statutory law under instruments such as the Matrimonial
Causes Act, 1971 (Act 367) coexists with customary marriage and divorce practices recognized under
Ghanaian law, and with Islamic family-law practice within the Muslim community. This platform did not
deep-dive Ghana's own domestic family-law statutes in this round of research, since the core relevance
to NRIs connected to Ghana is the cross-border enforcement question addressed above.
Common mistakes people connected to Ghana make:
- Assuming a Ghanaian family-court decree can be directly executed in India, when it cannot.
- Not preserving certified copies of the Ghanaian judgment and proceedings needed to support a
Section 13 suit in India.
- Overlooking that OCI status does not itself affect jurisdiction or enforcement questions in
either country's courts.
