53 Year Old Woman Seeks Divorce over Husband’s Failure to Impregnate Her 

A 53-year-old woman, Christy, on Friday in Abuja asked an FCT High Court to dissolve her seven-year-old marriage due to her husband’s failure to impregnate her.

Christy made the request during her testimony in her petition against her husband, Emmanuel.

The petitioner told the court that she was almost 46-years-old when she got married to the respondent and that she made it clear to him then that her objective was to have children.

The wife accused her husband of failure to perform his conjugal rights, alleging that they sometimes made love only four times in a year.

“He has had four children from two previous marriages, but I wanted a child of my own and he promised to support me. I was still menstruating when we got married, but sometimes he chooses not to sleep with me when I am ovulating.

He travelled a lot and always gives the excuse of pressure of work. He claimed that he doesn’t know when I ovulate, yet I lived in the same room with him in the few years of our marriage. How do I begin to tell the court that sometimes we make love only four times in a year?” she said.

Christy testified that she was desirous of having her own child and decided to go for assisted conception in a hospital her husband was familiar with.

“Yet, he still did not give me the desired support,” she said.

According to her, the respondent claimed the cost for assisted conception was too high and the possibility of its success was narrow.

The wife told the court that she never saw the result of her husband’s sperm count test.

“I moved out of his home in 2015, by then I was over 50 years and I was not getting the support I needed, I wasn’t getting younger and my chances of conceiving was getting thinner. I want a formal dissolution of this marriage,” she pleaded with the court.

Emmanuel, led in evidence by his counsel A. S Elouku, however, said he was not contesting the request for dissolution of the marriage.

“If the court grants her prayers, so be it; it is God that gives children, I am not God.”

While being cross examined by Gabriel Anu, the petitioner’s counsel, the respondent told the court that he knew that his wife was close to menopause when they got married.

He said that his schedule as a veterinary doctor, made it impossible for him to be with her always.

Oluseye told the court that he shuttled between Minna, Abuja and Kwara, while she remained in Abuja.

He said when he had time after the job was over, she decided to leave the house.

“I have no problem, but she had issues; I even suggested that if it has to do with her eggs, we should meet her sister in South Africa to donate eggs to her, but she declined after sometime.”

Presiding judge, Justice Bello Kawu, adjourned the case till May 3 for continuation of hearing.