Mr Edward Steele-Dadzie, the Principal Executive Office in charge of Marriage Registry at CCMA made this known to the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Wednesday.  Mr Steele-Dadzie said the oldest couple to register their marriage in the last quarter was aged 64 years for the bridegroom and 62 for the bride while a 23-year-old bridegroom and 21 for the bride was the youngest couple.

The oldest couple to have registered their marriage over the last eight years were 82 years-old for the groom and 52 years for the bride, while the youngest couple in 2018 was 21 years for the groom and 18 for the bride.

He said the facility had witnessed a sharp rise in divorce cases usually among couples aged between 20 and 35-years and blamed it on lack of proper understanding of the tenets of marriage. He identified young women in marriage as leading the demand for marriage divorce. They usually visited the centre stressed out in marriage and disappointed by attitudinal dilemma of their husbands.

He also mentioned insincerity as well as shirking of responsibilities as some of the causes of divorces in the society. The Principal Executive Office in charge of Marriage Registry urged all would-be couples to endeavour to adequately prepare themselves before going into marriage since marriage was a very important institution.

It was unfortunate that some youth just follow the crowd and rushed into marriages without actually understanding its consequences, and urged them to always go for marriage counselling to prepare themselves adequately for marriage.

He expressed regret about the situation where young men were forced to marry girls they impregnated as a recipe for divorce, because in some cases, the men were psychologically and economically unprepared thereby making it very difficult for them to manage their families

Mr Steele-Dadzie appealed to couples to have their marriages registered to enable them benefit from the provisions under the law. According to him those whose marriages were contracted under the ordinance stood to benefit from the PND C Law 111/112 and the CAP/127 ordinance law in case of the demise of a spouse.