The courts in Ghana are often called upon to define the legal composition of the family and to determine membership of it in order to confirm or confer rights on individuals on the basis of family membership. In defining the legal composition of the Akan family for such purposes, some judges and text writers have failed to distinguish between the rights of control which are the prerogative of the maximal lineage, and the rights of benefit which reside in the sublineage, and have, as a result, mistakenly equated branches of lineages or sublineages with the maximal lineage, thereby according legal personality to the so-called immediate family. A review of cases in this area of Akan family law indicates that the socioeconomic implications of the individualization of interests which this narrow view of the legal composition of the family exemplifies have not been seriously considered in the adjudicative processes of the courts. The better view seems to be that there is only one type of family in Akan family law consisting of lineages segmented into branches, though there may be variations in places with regard to internal arrangements about how rights may be enjoyed. Notes, ref.
