A man who has been trying to divorce his wife for the past two years was left in shock after the court ruled he was not married to her.
The man identified with initials JAM is reported to have lost a divorce case against the woman SNM twice on account that he could not prove that he had paid dowry.
According to a report by Daily Nation, the court also ruled that although the two had lived together for a decade, he did not have documents or witnesses to show that they were married.
“I am not persuaded that the appellant proved his case on a balance of probabilities. In the first place he did not, apart from asserting he married the respondent in April 2008, prove there was a marriage," ruled Justice Maina.
After loosing the first round of divorce in December 6, 2017, he told the court that he wanted to part ways with his wife, accusing her of being abusive and a drunkard.
He said he married SNM in April 2008 as a second wife and that she came into the marriage with three children.
The man said he was also aggrieved by the woman's unwillingness to bear more children and abusing those of his first wife.
“She is a drunkard, abusive and cruel to me as well as my children and my first wife. Due to her conduct, the marriage has irretrievably broken down to the extent that no amount of amends can save it," said the man.
"I can no longer bear the verbal and psychological abuses she puts me through and the marriage should therefore be dissolved,” he added.
Despite the case being heard unopposed, the man lost and was instead ordered to pay the woman the cost of the case.
He then moved to the High Court in Nyamira in 2018 to challenge the ruling raising eight grounds which he felt were ignored by the lower court.While affirming a magistrate’s court verdict that there was no marriage to annul, High Court judge Esther Maina observed that despite his statement that there was marriage, he had nothing to prove the same.
The court ruled that the appellant did not table evidence that he had lived with the woman before the 2014 Marriage Act came into force.
She noted that although the law acknowledged couples who have cohabited for long time the case between JAM and SNM was more of a customary arrangement that again lacked proof.