No, you cannot successfully sue your fiancé’s friends simply because they referred to you as their friend’s “wife” when they knew that he intended to marry another person.
The expression “our wife” may be used informally or culturally to describe or acknowledge a friend’s girlfriend or partner.
In that context, it does not ordinarily amount to a legal representation or guarantee that the person will eventually marry you. The fact that someone calls you “our wife” does not, by itself, create a legal obligation on that person to ensure that the relationship results in marriage.
Your fiancé’s friends also generally have no legal duty to investigate, confirm, or disclose his true intentions about marriage to you.
If your fiancé was secretly planning to marry someone else, the primary legal question would therefore concern his own conduct and any legally enforceable promise he may have made to you, rather than the words used by his friends.
If your fiancé expressly promised to marry you and you have evidence of that promise, the situation may be different. Depending on the circumstances and the applicable law, you may have a claim against him for breach of promise to marry and may seek damages where the law permits.
The amount of damages is not automatically ₦100 million simply because a claim is brought. The court would determine the appropriate remedy based on the evidence, circumstances of the case, and applicable law.
Therefore, merely being called “our wife” by your fiancé’s friends is unlikely, on its own, to give you a valid claim against them. If there was a specific promise of marriage made by your fiancé, the evidence of that promise and what happened afterward would be much more important to any potential legal claim.
The law generally determines liability based on legally recognised rights, duties, promises, and evidence, rather than on assumptions or the emotional expectations created by informal expressions.
