Case Update (22 June 2026): Adewale v. Adewale; validity of Nigerian sequential marriages
This is an appeal to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. The parties participated in a marriage ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria on April 21, 2011 under Nigerian “statutory law.” They ultimately then settled in Pennsylvania until they separated in 2018. They are both now dual U.S.-Nigerian nationals. The Husband filed for divorce in Pennsylvania in 2020, and the parties engaged in an arbitration process related to their property. It was during that process that the Husband began to doubt the validity of the parties’ marriage, now believing that, at the time of their marriage in 2011, the Wife was already legally married to another person (having married them in 2001, and not legally divorced them). The Wife proceeded to file pleadings in the Pennsylvania lawsuit - a request to enjoin the Husband from pursuing an annulment in Nigeria, and a request to declare their marriage in 2011 to be legally valid. The trial court enjoined the Husband from pursuing an annulment or other dissolution action in Nigeria or any other jurisdiction. The Husband then sought relief by asking the court to declare their marriage void. There was extensive litigation and multiple hearings. The court honed in on the question before it: was the parties’ marriage valid under the law of Nigeria (the place of celebration)?
During their hearings, the parties had numerous witnesses, including a variety of Nigerian law witnesses. The Husband presented, as a witness, the Wife’s purported husband who claimed that, in 2011, and still through this date, he was legally married to the Wife from a customary and Islamic law marriage ceremony in Nigeria in 2001. There were photos and a marriage certificate, and experts who opined that the Wife was already legally married under Nigerian law, and therefore her marriage in 2011 to Husband was invalid, because her prior customary marriage was not yet dissolved. The Wife, too, presented evidence, claiming that the photos and evidence from 2001 were not of a marriage to the prior spouse, but just an “introduction ceremony” and she never proceeded to marry him. Further, no dowry was paid, and therefore a marriage was never concluded. She also argued that at the time she apparently “married” the prior spouse in 2001, she was married to a third man, but she could not locate documentary evidence to support that claim. She produced an expert who opined that she was legally divorced from Spouse 1 in 2006, was not married to Spouse 2 in 2001, and therefore was free to legally marry Spouse 3 (the Husband here) in 2011.
The trial court concluded that the Wife was legally married to Spouse 2 in 2001 pursuant to Nigerian customary and Islamic law. She has not shown that she divorced that spouse by the time she married Husband/Spouse 3 in 2011. The court vacated the order of support that the Husband/Spouse 3 was paying in the Pennsylvania case. Both parties appealed (the Husband for back support he already paid).
On appeal, the Superior Court opined that the Court was obligated to apply the law of the place of celebration - Nigeria; that Nigeria has three legal pathways to marry (customary, Islamic, and statutory law); and that statutory marriage in Nigeria precludes polygamy. In that Pennsylvania has a presumption of a marriage being valid, the Husband had the burden to prove that at the time he married the Wife, she was already legally married (and that marriage was not yet dissolved). He met this burden.
