A judge has granted a warring couple a divorce and directed the sale of their family home, with two-thirds of the proceeds for the woman and a third for the man.
The woman lives with the couple’s children in the property, valued at about €475,000 but with an outstanding mortgage of about €100,000, and the man is in rented accommodation.
The family home is the main financial asset of the marriage and it is “unfortunate” its value is “simply not enough” to comfortably or easily rehouse two families, the High Court’s Ms Justice Nuala Jackson said.
For reasons including housing the children and that the woman takes primary responsibility for their daily needs, an equal division of the sale proceeds of the family home would not constitute proper provision, the judge held.
Sky Ireland tells court it is not obliged to give end of contract notice
Family of Donegal teenager murdered by loyalists receives damages over alleged collusion
HSE apologises to teenager (17) for injection of wrong Covid vaccine with already-used needle
Quham Babatunde died from stab wound to chest, coroner says
She assessed child maintenance of €150 weekly for as long as some of the children remain dependent and directed the man to pay all sports related expenditure for them.
In her recently published judgment on divorce proceedings initiated by the man following the couple’s separation after a long marriage, the judge also made access orders.
Both parents will be joint custodians of their minor children, she ordered. She made additional orders concerning the father’s access to the children, including for every second weekend and one regular overnight weekly.
An assessor who met the children reported they were “very alive to the fraught relationship” between their parents “and would dearly like this not to be the case”, the judge noted.
Children who live within ongoing parental conflict “become exhausted with the strain of it and often opt out of a relationship with one parent to make their lives less fraught”, she said. The parents, particularly the father, with whom the children are not living on a daily basis, “must be careful to avoid this”.
The evidence showed the two older children had fluctuating relationships with their father and now have some animosity towards him. This was “unfortunate” but hopefully would resolve with time and might be assisted by the finalising of the litigation.
There appeared to be multiple causes for the fluctuating relationships but she considered the respective roles of each parent has an influence, she said.
The evidence suggested the woman seemed to be the person “offering stability and predictability, and engaging with the mundanities and necessities of everyday life” while the man appeared more attracted to the “special events”.
That was not a critique of either party, but the court believed these roles contributed to the animosity between the parties and the day-to-day dependency of the children on their mother, who seemed to be “exhausted” and feeling very unsupported by the man.
She found both parties to be hard workers who made equal contributions over the course of the marriage. They moved house a number of times and suffered as a result of the property crash. Both are in gainful employment.
Based on the evidence, the judge believed the man was engaging in additional work and has earnings beyond his employment income and that the woman has some additional income from certain occasional work.
She noted that the woman was receiving child benefit and the man was receiving housing assistance payment, she noted. Both had family support and maybe some modest borrowings available to them, she added.
She believed the man did his best to pay maintenance during the Covid-19 pandemic. Another factor she noted was unsatisfactory financial documents provided by the woman.
While the woman had testified the man was previously convicted of breach of a domestic violence order, confirmation of that was not forthcoming, she said. Nor was the court convinced there was any significant breach of access orders.
