A will is often seen as the final expression of a person’s values, beliefs, and intentions — a summary of their life’s desires, carefully packaged for posterity. But what happens when a man’s last wishes cross the line from responsibility to control?
The recent revelations about the late Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu’s will — particularly his directive that his wife must not remarry or risk forfeiting all he left her — have reopened an uncomfortable but necessary conversation. At its heart are the themes of male control, conditional love, and the invisible chains that society still binds around women, even in widowhood.
According to media reports, Chief Iwuanyanwu, a revered businessman and elder statesman, stated in his will that his wife would lose all inheritance should she choose to remarry. He is not alone. Many wealthy men, both publicly known and privately powerful, have inserted similar celibacy clauses into their wills.
On the surface, such instructions are often masked as acts of “love” or “protection.” Some men claim they don’t want their wealth falling into the hands of strangers. Others say they’re protecting their wives from future betrayal or mistreatment. But when the justifications are stripped away, these clauses are rarely about care — they are about control. After all, property can be safeguarded without limiting a woman’s right to rebuild her life.
In such wills, what is given with one hand — money, property, houses — is taken away with the other: freedom, dignity, and the right to choose happiness after grief. The widow is essentially told: “You may survive, but not fully live. You may breathe, but not love again.”
For centuries, patriarchy has taught men that wives are possessions, not partners — that a woman’s loyalty is owed forever. Even after death has dissolved the marital bond, some men seek to bind their wives to their memory. In doing so, they reduce her to half a human being. They deny her the possibility of companionship, love, or a more fitting partnership in her later years. They insist that her identity must forever be “someone’s wife,” when in truth, she has always been more than that.
It’s telling that women rarely include similar clauses for their husbands in their wills. Perhaps it’s because they know it’s pointless — or more importantly, they understand that life is a journey filled with seasons, surprises, and second chances.
So why is this generosity not extended the other way?
Let us be clear: marriage, for all its beauty and significance, is a living contract. Death dissolves that contract. This is not only common sense; it is also scriptural. In most faith traditions including Christianity, death is the legal and spiritual end of a marriage. “Till death do us part” is not a poetic flourish, it is the release clause of marriage and crafting a will that extends this tie beyond the grave is to ignore this truth and impose bondage where there should be freedom.
What makes this worse is that these kinds of wills reflect not only a lack of trust in the wife, but suspicion. It suggests the man fears that, if left free, the wife will make bad choices, fall into the hands of greedy men, or worse, stop mourning him too soon. But why this fear? Why assume the worst of the woman you supposedly loved and shared your life with? If trust and mutual respect were truly present in a marriage and if a man does not think his wife is a simpleton who will fall willingly into the hands of a swindler, this clause would never be necessary.
Let us face another truth, uncomfortable as it may be. These kinds of restrictive wills breed hypocrisy, not virtue. Many women, especially in traditional African societies, being prevented from openly remarrying have quietly taken lovers, secret companions, or life partners out of the public view. They remain “faithful widows” on paper but seek intimacy, warmth, and joy in the shadows. The question I ask is can the man wake from the dead to stop his wife from having lovers or giving money to men? Of course not! So why delude himself by thinking she will remain chaste in mourning because of a clause in his Will?
I don’t condone hypocrisy but I must ask if this is the life we wish for our mothers, sisters, or daughters? To pretend, to hide, to live half-truths because a dead man’s pride wrote the script? We may comfort ourselves by saying “she is honoring her late husband,” but what she is really doing is performing the expectations of society while silently negotiating her own humanity behind closed doors. You may say it’s alright as long as it’s not in people’s faces, but the danger of unjust traditions is that they do not change the human heart, they merely drive natural desires underground, where they fester and breed quiet resentment or shame.
What is worse, the same society that frowns on a widow remarrying is the one that winks when a widower takes a new bride sometimes within weeks of his wife’s death. Men are allowed to seek comfort in the bosom of other women and even bear children through her, without anyone being afraid of dilution of their shared wealth even where it is obvious that the dead woman contributed majorly to their wealth.
Why the double standards?
If there is one thing we must do as a society, it is to teach men to trust beyond the grave. A man who has loved well, provided well, and treated his wife with respect should rest in the confidence that she will make wise choices, with or without him. His legacy should not be one of control but of blessing. His love should not be a chain but a wing. A good man’s greatest hope should be that his wife, if lonely, may find joy again, that she may laugh, hold hands, and even marry again if she chooses. To deny her this, is not proof of love; it is proof of insecurity, selfishness and control.
As a people, we must encourage open discussions between couples on this matter. A man writing his will must ask: am I leaving a blessing or a burden? Am I gifting security or fear? Am I loving or controlling? What does it matter who is loving my wife when I am dead? Personally, my late husband and I agreed before he died that if any of us died , all we owed the dead spouse was a year of mourning and after that we were free to find happiness in the arms of someone else. Why would we want to deny our spouses happiness when we are dead? Men must also confront the hypocrisy of wanting their daughters to have freedom while insisting their wives remain bound. If you want your daughter to remarry happily if widowed, why prevent another woman, the woman you married from the same right?
Before you cast me off as being unrealistic, there are many ways of protecting one’s wealth and inheritance. There are estate planning tools like trust funds, outright gifts etc that will make it difficult for anyone to dispose a wife of her husband’s wealth but I guess it’s easier to put the no remarriage clause in Wills so that the bonds of marriage transcend death?
What, then, is the right way? Leave your wife free. Bless her with property, money, and goodwill. Trust her judgment. Let her memory of you be sweet, not bitter. Let her future be open, not chained to your fears.
The controversy around Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu’s will and that of many other wealthy men both here and abroad, is not just about one man’s final wishes. It is a mirror to us all. It reflects how deeply we still believe that a woman’s life ends when her husband dies. It shows how far we still have to go in teaching men to love without owning, and women to live without apology.
It’s the international widows day on Monday 23rd June and it is my prayer that we all, men and women, learn to let go, even in death because, true love releases; it does not restrain nor does it limit.