B v B (Declaration as to Marital Status)

This is an application under section 55 of the Family Law Act 1986 for a declaration as to marital status. I refer to the applicant as “the husband” and to the respondent as “the wife”. Both have appeared before me as litigants in person. Both parties hold dual Cameroonian and British citizenship. They were both naturalised as British Citizens in the mid 2010s.

As I explain in this judgment, this is a case where there is considerable factual dispute between the parties; to the point that although they both accept that they have been through a marriage ceremony with each other, they do not agree when or where this ceremony took place, whether the marriage that it is said to have effected has subsequently been dissolved, or how many children of the marriage there have been.

Throughout these proceedings, including at the final hearing, the husband, who has a significant visual impairment, has been assisted by a McKenzie Friend. On various occasions I have had to repeatedly remind the McKenzie Friend of his role which is to provide support and assistance. Whilst the husband has acted as his own advocate at each hearing, the frequency and vehemence of the private discussions that have taken place in court between him and the McKenzie Friend is something upon which I have had cause to issue warnings on a number of occasions. Overall, I have been left with the impression that the McKenzie Friend has been directing the husband’s case, and that he is in large part the author of the repeated and lengthy written applications that have characterised the husband’s conduct of this matter. As I explain below, I was particularly struck by a discrepancy between the husband’s oral evidence (when he did not have the McKenzie Friend by his side) and his subsequent submissions made after he had had an opportunity to discuss his performance in the witness box with his McKenzie Friend.

I have been considerably assisted in reaching conclusions in this case by the evidence of Ms Josepha Sulem-Yong, a Cameroonian lawyer who acted as the single joint expert in this case. I have found her very clear evidence on the status of customary ceremonies under Cameroonian law to be extremely helpful.

Section 55 of the Family Law Act 1986 permits the High Court or the Family Court to make one of a number of declarations on relation to a marriage. These are:

In order to have jurisdiction to make such a declaration, under section 55(2) Family Law Act 1986 one of the parties must:

I will begin by briefly summarising the parties’ respective positions.

The husband’s case is that he met the wife in a city in Southwest Cameroon in or around 2001 or 2002 (his evidence on this point varied). At that time she was still attending school, although his case is that he understood her to have be born in 1978 (and thus aged around 25 at this time). He was introduced to her as “LY” and understood this to be her name. They cohabitated for a period in Cameroon for a period. In January 2003 they married in Village A, Cameroon according to the tribal customs of the local tribe in the presence of members of both of their families, with the wife taking the husband’s last name of “B” to become “LYB”. In 2004 they had a daughter, RB. During this period the husband was generally absent from home, as he was “on the run” from the Cameroonian authorities as a result of his separatist political activities, whilst the wife apparently undertook a university course in a city in West Cameroon between 2004 and 2006.

In 2006 the husband sought asylum in the UK. In his screening interview he told the UK authorities, that he had a wife, LYB and two daughters (namely RB and a second daughter from a previous relationship).

The husband says that RB died early in 2008. Later that year the husband wished to bring the wife to the UK. However, before this could occur the wife and her family insisted on a further ceremony for the payment of the outstanding balance of the “bride price” which had been left outstanding on the parties’ marriage in 2003. This is a sum payable by the groom and his family upon a customary marriage taking place in Cameroon and is often not all paid at once. Such a ceremony took place in September 2008 in Village B, Cameroon, a village to which the husband says that the wife’s parents had moved following her father’s retirement. The husband did not attend, although other members of his family did.

Subsequent to this ceremony, in October 2008, the wife moved to the UK and lived together with the husband. Two children were born in the UK; SKB and TGB.

The parties’ relationship subsequently deteriorated. In 2022 the husband brought proceedings against the wife in the County Court in relation to the ownership of two properties in the UK. Those proceedings were dismissed on a summary basis by a District Judge on the grounds that the parties were married and that the ownership of the properties should be dealt with by way of financial remedy proceedings on a divorce. The husband’s case is that the wife achieved this outcome by producing a fraudulent Cameroonian civil marriage certificate to the District Judge. This document purports to show that the parties were married in a civil ceremony in a city in Southwest Cameroon in January 2003.

In the meantime, in September 2022, the husband asserts that the parties’ traditional marriage was dissolved in a traditional customary ceremony that took place in Village B in the presence of members of both the husband’s and wife’s families (but with neither the husband nor wife themselves being present).

On that basis the husband asserts that the parties are divorced (and the conclusion of the District Judge that they are married is wrong) and seeks a declaration as to their marital status under section 55 of the Family Law Act 1986.

Finally, the husband asserts that since these proceedings were issued (which is now as long ago as May 2024), he has instructed an investigator in Cameroon who has discovered that the wife’s true name is “FRD” and that she was born in 1984. His case is that he was previously unaware of these matters and that the wife had deceived him as to her true identity throughout the whole relationship.

The wife’s case is strikingly different. She wholly accepts that her true given name is FRD and that she was born in 1984. She is from Village B in Cameroon (around 50 miles from Village A as the crow flies but considerably further by road) and is a member of the tribe local to Village B. In 2001, when the husband claims that they met, she was 17 years old and attending school in a town near Village B under that name. She took her A levels in 2003, when aged 18. In 2004 she was admitted (again under her true name of FRD) to university in a city in West Cameroon where she read law, graduating in 2006. Throughout this period she had not met, let alone married, the husband, although some of his younger siblings had attended the same school as her at the same time.

In 2007 a cousin of hers who lived in the UK put her in touch with the husband who was at the time working here and sharing a flat with that cousin. They began regular telephone conversations and ultimately the husband asked her to marry him and come to the UK. In order for this to happen, the wife’s case is that she needed documents in the name of LYB, the name that the husband had given to the UK immigration authorities as that of his wife. Documents in that name were procured for her, either by the husband or members of his family.

On 12 September 2008 she and the husband married in a traditional customary ceremony that took place in Village B according to local custom. The husband was in the UK at the time and was represented by proxy. The wife has produced a copy of a marriage agreement said to have been signed by both fathers at the ceremony which sets out the agreed bride price.

Following this marriage ceremony, the wife travelled to the UK using documents in the name of LYB and that is the name that she has used throughout her time living in the UK. Her UK driving licence and passport are in that name. Nonetheless, the wife’s case is that that the husband has always known her true name and date of birth; referring to her by a contraction of her true middle name, and naming their child TGB after her father.

The wife’s case is that there have only ever been two children of the marriage; SKB and TGB. Her evidence is that SKB was her first pregnancy, and that the daughter RB described by the husband has never existed.

The wife denies that the 2022 divorce ceremony described by the husband ever took place; her case is that her father was not in Cameroon at the time when the ceremony is said to have happened and that the description of the ceremony given by the husband and his witnesses does not accord with the customs of her tribe in any event.

As to the civil marriage certificate, the wife also accepts that this is a fraudulent document and no such civil ceremony took place. However, her case is that it was created by the husband or members of his family to support her entry to the UK in 2008. She accepts that she told the District Judge in 2022 that they were married but denies producing the certificate in court.

The parties are now separated and the wife has recently had a further child with her new partner.

The above is a summary of the key points of the parties’ cases. There are many other ancillary factual issues on which the parties are in dispute. The husband, in particular, has sought to expand the range and scope of these proceedings, making allegations about the wife and her family members and witnesses encompassing benefit fraud and the fraudulent use and production of documents, beyond those that are said to evidence the marriage. I have been clear to the parties, that my focus in these proceedings is on the question of the parties’ marital status, and throughout the preparatory stages of this case and the final hearing itself, I have been clear that the court will not be sidetracked into these thickets of subsidiary issues and that I will deal with them in this judgment only to the extent that I consider it to be necessary to explain my conclusions on the actual issues.

Both parties called additional witnesses. In support of his case the husband filed statements from four additional witnesses; from his stepmother, and from three of his brothers. Additionally, he exhibited two further statements as exhibits to one of his own witness statements. One of these is a document signed by his stepmother and four other family members said to have been present at the 2022 divorce ceremony, although it is unclear why the husband did not seek to call these other family members to give evidence in their own right. The other statement was made by the husband’s father prior to his death.

The wife called two witnesses; her father and the cousin who she asserts introduced her to the husband in 2007.

The evidence of the two sets of family members reflected the stark differences in the parties’ cases. The husband’s witnesses support his case; that the parties married in a customary ceremony in Village A in January 2003 with the wife hiding her true identity; that the 2008 ceremony was simply the payment of the outstanding bride price; and that there had been a customary divorce in Village B in 2022. The wife’s witnesses support her case; that there was no 2003 ceremony (the evidence of the wife and her father is that they had never been to Village A); that the parties were introduced in 2007; that the marriage was effected by the 2008 ceremony in Village B and that there had never been a customary divorce.

It will be appreciated that the differences between the witnesses’ accounts are such that both sets cannot be true. This is not a case where the discrepancy can be explained by mistake or misunderstanding. At least one set of witnesses is lying about the key matters in dispute. Given that the court was placed in a situation where it was being required to choose between these two versions of events, I considered that, if at all possible, the witnesses should attend in person in order to be cross-examined on the statements.

With the exception of the wife’s cousin, all of the additional witnesses live abroad and as Cameroonian citizens require visas to enter the UK. I set the date for the final hearing at a directions hearing in October 2025, so the parties had nearly six months to make arrangements for their witnesses to obtain visas to enter the UK. A pre-trial review took place on 11 March 2026. On that occasion I directed the parties to let me know by 8 April whether or not the visa applications had been successful, so that if they had been unable to obtain visas, I could consider making orders for witnesses to give evidence remotely. The wife complied with this direction, informing me that her father had obtained a visa. By contrast the husband did not. On 13 March 2026 I received an email via my clerk from the husband telling me that the Home Office had indicated that they might not be in a position to determine the visa applications before June and asking for my assistance in expediting matters. I explained that I had no jurisdiction or power to expedite the grant of a visa but authorised the husband to disclose a previous court order to the UK authorities so that they had confirmation that the witnesses were indeed required to give evidence at the final hearing in this matter.

I had no further update from the husband until 16 April, four working days before the final hearing was due to begin, when I received an email from the husband via my clerk seeking an adjournment of the final hearing on various grounds, including the fact that his witnesses had been unable to obtain visas. The wife indicated that she did not oppose an order for the husband’s witnesses to attend remotely, and I therefore made an order permitting them to do so. Unfortunately, their attendance proved extremely unsatisfactory.

In advance of the final hearing, the husband indicated that none of his witnesses (two of whom were in Cameroon and two of whom were in the Middle East) had access to a stable video connection and asked me to order a British Embassy in the Middle East to make suitable video-conferencing facilities available. I declined to do so on the basis that it was for the husband to make the appropriate arrangements for his witnesses to give evidence. I also declined the husband’s application to adjourn the final hearing to give his witnesses an opportunity to attend in person or to allow further disclosure to be sought from the Home Office.

In the event, it proved extremely difficult to take the evidence of the husband’s witnesses, all of whom were originally supposed to give their evidence on the afternoon of the first day of the final hearing. Two of his brothers attended from the Middle East that afternoon, but their video connection was so unstable, that apart from affirming an interpreter and one of the brothers it proved impossible to make progress. The other witnesses, the husband’s stepmother and another brother who were in Cameroon did not attend at all.

I gave the husband a further opportunity to call his witnesses on the second day of the final hearing, explaining to him the need for them to find a place with a sufficiently stable internet connection to give their evidence. However, the second afternoon of the hearing was largely a repeat of the first. The same two brothers attended from a different location in the Middle East, but again the connection was so poor that it was rarely possible to ask more than one question before the witness disconnected from the courtroom. I did not consider that cross-examination in such circumstances was fair and was particularly concerned by the fact that the link cut out immediately after a witness had been asked a question about the disputed child RB (but before he had answered the question), and it took a significant period of time for the link to be re-established. Eventually I stopped the cross-examination as I did not consider that the process was fair or that I could be confident that the answers that I was being given represented the witness’s own contemporaneous knowledge without any assistance (either from notes or from a third party). I therefore indicated to the parties that I would admit the brothers’ evidence as hearsay statements under the Civil Evidence Act 1995, but would take into account, when assessing that evidence, the fact that the wife had been unable to cross-examine one brother effectively or to cross-examine the other brother at all.

The husband’s stepmother and the other brother were still unable to give evidence on the afternoon of the second day. However, a solution to this was found in that the single joint expert, Ms Sulem-Yong was due to give evidence by video-link from her office in Cameroon on the morning of the third day, and she kindly agreed that they could attend her office to give their evidence. Even that was not an end to the difficulties faced by the court. The stepmother, who speaks a Cameroon pidgin English dialect gave evidence through an interpreter whose translations (both of questions and answers) were hotly disputed by the husband.

For the wife, her father and cousin both attended court in person, although her father proved to have both significant hearing and visual impediments which made the taking of his evidence far from straightforward too.

A striking feature of the witness statements is the resemblance that all the statements that have been produced by one side bear to each other, in format, typeface and language. For example, there are clear similarities between a paragraph on the relevant tribal formalities for a customary marriage ceremony in the wife’s father’s first statement and an equivalent paragraph in her cousin’s. Likewise, the accounts of the various ceremonies said to have been attended by the husband’s witnesses are somewhat generic (the paragraphs in the stepmother’s statement and the statement of one of the husband’s brothers regarding the 2022 divorce ceremony are very similar) and lacking in detail. Given that both parties are litigants in person, I asked each of the witnesses who were cross-examined about the manner in which their statements had been prepared. The evidence of all of them is that they each saw a lawyer, told that lawyer their version of events which was then duly recorded by the lawyer (and in the case of those witnesses who cannot read, the statement was read back over to them before signing it). Given the resemblance between the statements submitted by each party, I consider it improbable that all of the statements were prepared in the manner described.

I do not consider that I can treat the evidence of either of the parties or any of the witnesses as wholly reliable. The similarities between the witness statements, the difficulties that I have already outlined in obtaining the oral evidence of the witnesses, and the inevitable lack of experience that both parties had in cross-examination means that I have felt it necessary to treat the accounts of all of the witnesses with considerable caution.

On balance, I have concluded that of the two starkly conflicting accounts with which I have been presented, I should prefer that put forward by the wife and her father. Of the two versions of events placed before the court the wife’s is significantly the more plausible. The husband’s account relies on a number of matters which are, in my view, highly unlikely to have taken place. Thus:

By contrast, the wife’s explanation for these events is far more convincing. Whilst she accepts that she has been using the name of LYB since 2008, she explains that this was to align with the story that the husband had already told the UK immigration authorities when he claimed asylum in 2006. This account is, of course, against her own interests, and I consider that it is likely to be true.

I am satisfied that the broad version of events put forward by the wife is, on the balance of probabilities the true one. I therefore make the following findings of fact:

Having concluded that I accept the wife’s account as to the circumstances under which the parties married, I must then also consider the husband’s contention that the marriage was dissolved by a customary divorce ceremony that took place in Village B in September 2022. Having broadly accepted the evidence of the wife and her witnesses in relation to the marriage, I have concluded that I should do so in relation to the divorce as well. I do not accept that the wife’s father was wholly unaware of any problems in the marriage (as he claimed to be) as the wife’s cousin’s evidence was that he had informed the wife’s father of such issues. I also remind myself of the principle that it does not necessarily follow that because a person is lying about one matter, they are lying about another matter (R v Lucas [1981] QB 720). Nonetheless, it seems to me to be wholly improbable that here one set of witnesses should have told the truth about the marriage ceremony but lied about the divorce, whilst the other set of witnesses should do precisely the opposite. Moreover, as with the marriage, my conclusions are supported by other evidence (or by the absence of such evidence) namely:

I therefore find that the customary divorce ceremony that the husband asserts happened in September 2022 did not take place.

Having made findings as to the factual position I have to consider the consequences that follow from those factual findings as a matter of English law. In this context I have had regard to the summary of the law concerning the validity of overseas ceremonies of marriage that is found in the judgment of Mostyn J in Tousi v Gaydukova [2023] EWHC 404 (Fam); [2024] 1 WLR 118 and the cases that are cited therein, in particular the judgment of Moylan J (as he then was) in Assad v Kurter [2014] 2 FLR 833. The following principles apply:

As I have already mentioned, the Court is in the fortunate position of having received an expert opinion on aspects of Cameroonian marriage law from Ms Josepha Sulem-Yong. Considerable difficulties were encountered in identifying an appropriate Cameroonian lawyer to provide the necessary advice and the Court is grateful to Ms Sulem-Yong for her assistance. Although she is relatively recently qualified, I found her advice to be clear and extremely helpful. Both parties had the opportunity to cross-examine her.

The key points that I take from Ms Sulem-Yong’s evidence are as follows:

Having regard to Ms Sulem-Yong’s evidence I am satisfied that the parties’ marriage is marriage is not recognised as legally valid in Cameroon. However, I am also satisfied that the case falls into the category identified by Mostyn J at para [70] in Tousi. That is to say it is a marriage which is defective under Cameroon law for want of compliance with the necessary formalities, but which could have been later ratified or validated by following the steps needed under the 1980 Ordinance (or the 2024 Law) for civil recognition. In those circumstances I am satisfied that I am bound by the applicable rules of private international law to treat this as a void marriage under English law. This is not a “non-qualifying ceremony”.

However, this conclusion means that I am unable to make the declaration that the applicant seeks. Section 58(5) of the Family Law Act 1986 prohibits the court from making a declaration that a marriage was at its inception void. This reflects the recommendations of the Law Commission in its report Family Law – Declarations in Family Matters (Law Com No 132) at paras 3.18 to 3.19. The appropriate relief in such circumstances (assuming that the parties meet the relevant jurisdictional requirements) is to obtain a nullity order.

I will therefore make no order on this application. However, I consider that it is open to either party to apply for a nullity order on the basis of the factual findings contained in this judgment.

I should make clear that even if I had accepted the husband’s evidence that the 2022 divorce ceremony had taken place, in the light of Ms Sulem-Yong’s evidence I would not have been satisfied that the ceremony was sufficient to effect a dissolution of the parties’ customary marriage in accordance with the traditions of the wife’s family tribe. Ms Sulem-Yong’s evidence was that the wife’s father’s evidence of the formalities required for such a dissolution was consistent with the views of others that she had spoken to from that locality and that the ceremony described by the husband and his witnesses failed to meet these requirements.

Finally, and in any event, as the parties’ marriage ceremony did not create a valid marriage capable of recognition under English law, the question of whether the divorce ceremony (assuming that it had actually taken place) would have been capable of recognition under English law (as to which see sections 45 and 46 of the Family Law Act 1986) does not arise.

Throughout these proceedings, the husband has sought to bring the fact that the wife used a false name to enter the UK to wider attention, at one point sending papers from the case (including the wife’s witness statements) to the Department of Work and Pensions. These proceedings have been taking place in private, and the husband had no permission to make use of the wife’s statement in this way, something that I have since made clear to him. I have required him to inform the DWP that the disclosure of this statement was unauthorised and that no use can be made of it.

However, the husband remains keen to draw the wife’s use of a false name to the UK authorities. In response to a question that I posed, he indicated that he would wish for this judgment to be disclosed to the Home Secretary. The wife indicated that she had no objection to that course of events.

I have, of course, made factual findings that do not reflect to the credit of either party. I have found that the husband lied in the information that he provided to the UK authorities when he applied for asylum and that both husband and wife were party to the decision for the wife to adopt a false name in order to enter the UK as LYB.

Here the parties are both adults. The husband wishes for the judgment to be disclosed to the Secretary of State, and the wife does not oppose this course of action. There are children potentially affected by any challenge to the parents’ status in the UK, the two children of the marriage and the wife’s young baby. However, these are not children proceedings and the criteria for the disclosure of documents from such proceedings identified in Re C (A Minor) (Care Proceedings: Disclosure [1997] Fam 76 are largely not directly applicable to the current situation. As Knowles J held in Re G (Disclosure of Fact Finding Judgment to Secretary of State for the Home Department) [2023] EWHC 450 (Fam) at [53] it is crucial that barriers should not be erected between family courts and other public bodies and agencies and the court should be wary of permitting the confidentiality which attaches to family proceedings to be used to conceal material and adverse findings about a party or their evidence from another public body such as the Secretary of State who has a direct, legitimate and undisputed interest in that material.

In the circumstances I will direct that a copy of my unredacted judgment in this matter should be sent to the Secretary of State. However, at this stage I do not give permission for any wider disclosure beyond the Secretary of State and her officials. Nor do I give permission for either party to disclose or make use of any other material that has come into their possession by reason of having been filed or disclosed within these proceedings. Should such further disclosure be sought (whether by the Secretary of State or either party) then a further application will need to be made.

In summary, I find: