The Lagos State High Court in Ikeja has declared Adenike Ajayi as the sole lawful widow of the late founder and Chief Executive Officer of First Foundation Hospital, Tosin Ajayi, a popular medical doctor, a pivotal judicial decision in the long-running dispute over his marital status and estate.
Delivering judgement on Wednesday, the judge, Oluwayoyin Odusanya, granted all the prayers out forward by Mrs Ajayi and her children.
|
|
The judge dismissed the competing claims filed by former beauty queen, Helen Prest, who also asserted that she was married to the late medical doctor.
The ruling was a decisive judgement in a case that began shortly after Mr Ajayi died on 26 April 2020, although aggrieved parties have the right to challenge it at the higher court.
|
|
|
|---|
Until the judgement, the disputes had expanded over time from a disagreement over inheritance into a full-blown contest over who, in law, could be recognised as his surviving spouse.
The years-long battle
The claimants, Adenike Oluyemisi Ajayi and her children, Tomi Deru, Olumide Ajayi, Omolade Soetan, Mayowa Okeowo and Bisola Ajayi, had approached the court in Suit No. ID/3364LM/21, seeking declarations that Mrs Ajayi remained the only lawful wife of the deceased and was entitled to administer his estate.
They also asked the court to recognise her entitlement to Mr Ajayi’s personal effects and one-third of his estate.
Ms Prest and her daughter, Tomisin Ajayi, opposed the suit, insisting that Mr Ajayi had been estranged from Mrs Ajayi for decades before his death and that he had entered into a valid Kalabari customary marriage with Ms Prest.
What followed was years of interlocutory applications, witness testimonies and cross-examinations that kept the dispute alive in court until the final judgement.
At a stage of proceedings in 2025, after Ms Prest was cross-examined by Kunle Adegoke, who is, a, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), lawyer to the claimants, Mr Odusanya had fixed 10 February for adoption of final written addresses.
The judge also commended lawyers on both sides for their restraint and professionalism in handling a highly contested matter.
Conflicting accounts of the relationship
During cross-examination, Ms Prest told the court she met Mr Ajayi in 1996 while practising law and that their relationship later matured into a Kalabari customary marriage.
She maintained that the late doctor had been living alone for years before they met and denied the existence of any continuing marital relationship between him and Mrs Ajayi.
She also told the court she attended one of the family weddings, insisting she sat beside Mr Ajayi throughout the ceremony and was recognised as his wife.
But that account was firmly disputed by the claimants, who maintained throughout the trial that Mrs Ajayi remained the only lawful spouse and that no valid customary marriage ever took place between Mr Ajayi and Ms Prest.
Dispute over estate claims
The case had already attracted public attention in 2021 when reports circulated suggesting that a court had awarded Ms Prest 50 per cent of Mr Ajayi’s estate.
Mrs Ajayi’s children quickly dismissed the reports as false.
In a statement reported by The Guardian, Mrs Olutomi Deru and Mrs Omolade Soetan clarified that what the court had granted at the time were interim orders in an ongoing suit, not any final decision on ownership or division of the estate.
They explained that the orders only allowed Ms Prest and her daughter to pursue their substantive claims while temporarily restraining Mrs Ajayi from managing the company pending determination of the case.
What the court finally decided
In its final judgement, the court held that Mrs Ajayi remained legally married to Mr Ajayi until his death, finding that their monogamous marriage was never dissolved.
It rejected the argument that long separation between spouses could, on its own, bring a marriage to an end.
“Separation, no matter how prolonged, does not dissolve a valid marriage unless there is a formal dissolution,” the court held, aligning with submissions by Mr Adegoke who argued that the marriage remained valid until the doctor’s death.
A key issue before the court was Ms Prest’s claim of a Kalabari customary marriage. The court, however, found that she did not present credible evidence to support it.
Mr Odusanya noted inconsistencies in her accounts, including earlier descriptions of herself as a common-law partner and, at another point, as being in a civil-law union with the deceased.
READ ALSO: UK court acquits ex-petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke of bribery charges.
The court also observed that she failed to establish basic details expected in a customary marriage claim, such as when and where the ceremony allegedly took place, and that no documentary or photographic evidence was produced.
Beyond that, the court further held that even if such a marriage had existed, it would still have been invalid, since evidence showed that Ms Prest was still legally married to her former husband, Mr Davies, at the time she claimed to have married Mr Ajayi.
The court consequently dismissed Ms Prest’s claims in their entirety and affirmed Mrs Ajayi as the only legally recognised widow of the deceased.
It also upheld Mrs Ajayi’s entitlement to one-third of Mr Ajayi’s personal estate and ruled that she remains the only person entitled to apply for letters of administration over the estate.
