When Love Fails: Legal Issues In Breach Of Promise To Marry By Yejide Gbenga-Ogundare

 

Often, love turns sour and partners find themselves going their separate ways even after a wedding date has been fixed. This act seems normal but there are legal issues that can arise when a lover jilts the other after a marriage proposal has been confirmed. YEJIDE GBENGA-OGUNDARE, in this piece, explores the provisions behind the legal term, ‘breach of promise to marry’ (BOPM), under the Nigerian law and the claims that can be legally awarded.

Daily, people fall in love and fall out of love before or after getting married. And life goes on for many, while for others, broken hearts lead to trauma, bitterness, tears and even suicide. At the end, they repeat the cycle because it is inherent in human nature to want the experience to love, be loved and generally, not be alone within the confines of marriage or otherwise. This major need to experience love is usually the reason many people get into relationships and do all sorts even at the detriment of their mental health to make it work and many, especially ladies, hope it will end in marital bliss.

Consequently, it is easy in such unions to make promises of marriage, only for one of the parties to pull out at the last minute for reasons that may be genuine or frivolous because the union was initially based on deceit.

Indeed, a love relationship with marriage in view, comes with lots of investment in terms of emotions, passion, time and resources, especially for the party that is in love deeply and sincerely. And this makes it painful and difficult to let go, especially by a party who seemed to have invested more.

And under the law, such breach to promise is recognised and such like other cases of contractual breach is recognised as a civil matter.

The “breach of promise to marry” is legitimate in the Nigerian context and the Nigerian law because an agreement to marry is viewed as a binding legal contract; and if a party can show that there was in actual fact an existence of a promise to marry and one party reneges, then a civil claim can be made.

Under Nigerian law, you can sue someone who promised to marry you and then changed their mind. However, you can’t sue the person to force them to follow through on their promise and force the union. The courts can order people to do many things, but ordering them to marry someone is not one of the things the court can do. What the Nigerian courts can do and will do is to award damages to an aggrieved party when there has indeed been a breach of promise to marry.

Like other contracts, marriage and the promise to marry is a recognisable contract because it is based on a promise; which is defined as the manifestation of an intention to act or refrain from acting in a specified manner conveyed in such a way that another is justified in understanding that a commitment has been made; a person’s assurance that a person will or will not do something. And breach of promise simply means the violation of one’s word or undertaking, especially a promise to marry. And under the English common law, an engagement to marry had the nature of a commercial contract, so if one party broke the engagement without justification, the innocent party was entitled to damages.

However, there cannot be a breach of marriage until a contract to marry has been made. This means that for a party to sue for a breach of promise to marry, discussion between parties must have gone beyond mere speculations, professions of love and personal belief and there must exist concrete agreement between parties even if it is not written or spoken but only deduced through the conduct of the parties.

A promise to marry goes beyond mere discussions about the future, the best way to show this is by an actual proposal of marriage, like a ring on the finger or acceptance of a marriage proposal. The aggrieved party will need to supply evidence to corroborate this.

A Supreme Court decision on the matter in a ruling by Tobi JSC in a matter between Ezeanah V Atta held that “while the law may at times require that an agreement to marry should be in writing, the law will be prepared to hold in appropriate cases that the parties intended to marry in the absence of any written agreement. In this respect, the court will take into consideration the institution of marriage as a trade in the relevant society and how persons generally engage themselves in agreement of marriage.”

Under the law, before a party can allege a breach, the relationship would have passed through certain stages; proposal, courtship, introduction and engagement before marriage though there are exceptions to these steps. For a party to be able to pursue breach of agreement to marry, there are some features of the contract that must be present; offer, intention to enter into legal relationship, acceptance, consideration, certainty and capacity.

An offer is like a proposal made by a man to a woman; it is not made to the public but to a particular person. The offer can be revoked before acceptance if the person that made the offer has a change of heart but it can only be valid if such change of mind is duly communicated to the other party. And such an offer shouldn’t be conditional; otherwise, it won’t be valid till the fulfillment of that condition.

Also, the party to whom the offer has been made must accept it and within a reasonable time, acceptance must be communicated to the person that offered. But an offer is implied to be legally rejected if the person offered instead of accepting the original offer makes a counter offer which varies the terms proposed offer because this puts an end to the initial offer.

In a case of a promise to marry, to establish that parties intended to enter into a legal relationship and have agreed to marry, it must pass the test of reasonableness. It must be such that a reasonable man would have regarded it as a promise of marriage intended to create a legal marital relationship and not mere cohabitation. It must be shown that there was a mutual understanding and meeting of minds between the parties that they agreed to get married. And for it to be seen as a valid agreement to marry, parties must both be capable of getting married as incapacity of either party will render such agreement void.

Breach of promise to marry

In the case of a breach, the aggrieved party can sue for damages. It should be borne in mind that either of the parties can bring an action for breach of promise to marry. The right to sue for a breach of promise to marry is not limited to women but can also be instituted by a male who is aggrieved. And in order to successfully bring an action for breach of promise to marry, the party must be able to prove that the other party made a promise of marriage which is concrete and beyond just hopeful expectations or casual suggestions.

The party must also prove that the other party reneged on the promise by showing that the other party failed to fulfill a promise. The party jilted must prove to the satisfaction of the court that there was in fact a promise of marriage under the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1990, or under Islamic Law or under Customary Law on the part of the other sex. Second, the party reneging has really and as a matter of fact failed or refused to keep to the agreement of the marriage.

There are two types of breach of promise to marry; nonperformance and anticipatory breach.

There is nonperformance breach where a date has been fixed for marriage but the other party refuses to honour such or where there is a condition precedent to the marriage taking place and the party who ought to discharge such obligation refuses to.

Anticipatory breach on the other hand occurs when a party prior to the date fixed for the wedding cancels it or better still decides to elope with another person or abandon a spouse at the altar, leaving the jilted party alone. Such aggrieved party, whether a male or female, can actually sue for breach of promise to marry and sue for damages.

Defences to breach of promise to marry

In a situation where there is a breach of promise to marry, the party in breach could have some defences, depending on the circumstances. The following are legitimate reasons that can be used to argue legality of breach of promise to marry:

Deceit/misrepresentation: When a party sets out with the aim of deceiving the other party into a promise to marry and the other party reneges on this ground, the latter cannot be sued for breach of promise to marry.

Infidelity: Where a party discovers, with proof and not mere speculations that the other person is not faithful but is busy sleeping around, such party can opt out of the agreement to marry.

Illnesses and diseases: Where a party is suffering from diseases that make it impossible to marry e.g., mental disorder, it can be a defence to breach of promise to marry.

Remedies

A wrong in the form of breach of promise to marry is not seen just as a moral wrong but also a legal wrong as it is identified under the laws and provisions. Most times, awards for damages are in form of money and properties and award of damages in this kind of action is at the discretion of the court which must be judiciously and judicially exercised upon proof of both promises to marry and breach of same. The Evidence Act, 2011 provides that “No Plaintiff in any action for breach of promise of marriage shall be entitled to succeed unless his or her testimony is corroborated by some other material evidence in support of such promise; and the fact that the defendant did not answer letters affirming that he had promised to marry the Plaintiff is not such corroboration.”

In the case of Uso v Iketubosin, the defendant promised to marry the plaintiff in 1947 and in 1957, he married another woman in breach of his promise to the plaintiff. The court held that the defendant’s act constituted a breach for which the plaintiff was entitled to damages.

In an article by Theophilus Ochonogor and Charity Ayo Olaifa of Alliance Law Firm, it was stated that “marriage is not only a family, traditional, cultural moral or religious issue. It is also a legal issue and should never be taken lightly as a breach of promise of marriage is actionable in law. When there is a breach of promise of marriage, an aggrieved party, whether male or female, may institute an action for damages. Such an aggrieved party does not have to suffer in silence, and should never resort to self–help, a remedy which has been condemned in a plethora of decided cases.

However, the law was not created as a way to get back at your ex; it was created as a way to compensate people for financial and emotional losses that they might have incurred, solely because someone made promises that they could not keep.

Breach of promise to marry in Nigeria is governed by the Nigerian Contract Act and common law principles. Recent judicial precedents have further solidified the legal framework surrounding breach of promise to marry, establishing the elements necessary to prove liability.

To establish a breach of promise to marry, it is crucial to demonstrate the existence of a promise and reasonable reliance leading to loss or detriment. Individuals involved in such cases should seek legal advice and present compelling evidence in line with the Nigerian statutory authority and recent judicial precedents