JUDGEMENT
APALOO J.A.
This appeal raises some interesting questions about the true requirements of adoption of a child in customary law. Although there is some controversy between the parties on the facts, there is also between them, a large area of agreement.
The plaintiff (i.e. the respondent) who should be in her mid-fifties, originally hailed from a town called Ogome in the Yilo Krobo District of the Eastern Region. She was born of Krobo parents. Late in 1933, just about the time that she reached puberty, she had an affair with a man from her home district. She found herself pregnant. There was and still is in Krobo custom, an inflexible rule which ordains that a female who reaches puberty, should undergo a customary rite called "dipo" before taking seed. A female who got pregnant before undergoing this ceremony, incurred severe customary sanctions. She was not only to be socially ostracized, but she was liable to be banished from home and disowned by her parents. At the time the pla…