Family Law
'Around 5,000 new cases a year come before the family courts
in which parents – almost always mothers - defy orders
to let the other parent have contact.'
Daily Mail (Feb. 2 '16) citing U.K. Justice Coleridge
Key Points
Family Law – General Election 2016
The Irish family law system is deeply flawed and causing much hardship to ordinary citizens, especially men and children. The injustices suffered by men have their roots in structures, attitudes and legislation, which was formulated without any account being taken of the needs and interests of men and fathers. Family legislation, which has evolved over the last thirty years, has been shaped exclusively by women’s organisations and the legal profession and is geared towards the needs and desires of those two groups to the exclusion of men. The organisation which promoted the evolution of the family law industry in the 1970s was ‘AIM – The Family Law Reform Group’, which consisted entirely of women, many of whom were lawyers. To get a glimpse of the extent to which men’s rights and interests were excluded from the development of the family law system one need only analyse the intense debate which preceded the Divorce referendum in 1995. In all the voluminous articles, papers, discussions etc. you will find numerous debates on whether or not divorce is good for women and children with both sides using women and children’s well-being to support their arguments. In all the debates in newspapers, TV, radio etc. you will not find a single reference to whether or not divorce was good for men and fathers. The only reference to men was a controversial poster which demonised fathers. The Commission on the Family which was set up after that referendum was dominated by women’s groups and the legal profession with absolutely no representation for men. A few individuals made submissions on men/father’s issues to the Commission but these were ignored by the feminist-dominated Commission. The time has come to give men a voice and allow men’s needs and interests to inform the formulation of family legislation and thereby end the injustices being inflicted on men. Some people and poorly resourced groups have tried to right these grievous wrongs but those in positions of power and influence prevented them from doing so.
There is now a growing awareness of the fact that the system is gender biased – it is extremely pro-woman and anti-man. This is proven by the outcome of virtually all family law cases. The three major issues involved in family law cases are (1) children (2) the family home and (3) finances. Women invariably emerge as supreme victors under all three headings. Women ‘get’ the children and with that prize goes the family home (and sometimes other property) and most of the family finances, regardless of who earns it. Men are routinely evicted from their homes without any reason (section 10 of the Family Law Act, 1995), removed from or marginalised in their children’s lives and, in most cases, left living in poverty in sub-standard accommodation often still paying mortgages etc. for the family home. They are effectively stripped of their dignity, depressed, their self-esteem shattered, and they are often suicidal. The victories and defeats are not marginal or partial, they are extreme – women get everything; men lose everything. It is hardly surprising therefore that the vast majority of judicial separations are initiated by women. The biased nature of the system is reflected in the advices given to men by solicitors. Men are conditioned to accept that women will get everything simply because they are women.
Any objective study of the comparative affects of family law decisions on the lives of men and women would show that it is extremely biased. The system has been designed to insulate women from the hardships of marriage/relationship breakdown by imposing all the hardships on men. In virtually all cases men have their parenthood severely diminished, are required to leave the family home and live in sub-standard accommodation and continue in the role of provider for their wives and children regardless of the hardship imposed on them. The extremes of victory and defeat, which are inherent in the system, exacerbate hostility and fuel this growing industry. Such extremes of victory and defeat are unnecessary and could be avoided by more creative initiatives to support families in times of crisis. Men are not informed of these facts prior to marriage – not even on State-financed pre-marriage courses.
Most men living in intact relationships are unaware of the extent to which their lives can be ‘shattered’ by the Family Law System. They foolishly believe that, because they are good fathers, good providers, good citizens and pay all their bills, their position as fathers, and their right to live in their own homes, is secure. But they are wrong, as many discover to their cost when they come in contact with the family law system. Their fatherhood is not their property, nor their children’s. It can be destroyed or diminished by judges at the behest of vindictive spouses or partners supported by highly trained professional lawyers. Perhaps the most devastating and disempowering discovery for such men is that they can be unilaterally evicted from their homes, for no reason other than to facilitate the separation process – a third millennium version of the Penal Laws.
There is a widespread fallacy, even among those who campaign for justice in family law, which is, that the law as written is not discriminatory – it is only discriminatory in its application. This is untrue. The law as written does discriminate against men. The legislation is designed to address women’s concerns only and totally ignores men’s concerns. It is framed in such a way as to ensure that women have all the advantages at men’s expense. For example the various Acts make ample provision for the well-being of ‘dependant spouses’ (mostly women) but make no mention of the well-being of the other spouse. In fact he doesn’t even merit a title (let’s call him the ‘provider spouse’).
One of the most serious examples of this discriminatory legislation is to be found in section 10 of the Family Law Act, 1995 which deals with the family home. It provides that a court shall take into consideration “that proper and secure accommodation should,…… be provided for a spouse who is wholly or mainly dependent on the other spouse …”. The court is not obliged to have any regard to the provider spouse’s need for proper and secure accommodation or his ongoing parental role. It is the legislation that needs to be changed. Until the powers to evict men from their homes is repealed the legalised destruction of fatherhood and persecution of men will continue. The time has come to demand that our legislators remove such draconian powers from the courts and from the statute book.
Having been evicted from his home, the separated father must then try to ‘rescue’ his fatherhood. But, unless he is in a financial position to either rent or buy another house, fulfilling his role as father in any meaningful way becomes an impossible task. With the burden of maintaining his wife and children, continuing to pay rent/mortgage on the family home as well as accommodate and provide for himself, very few separated fathers can afford a second house. Most end up in bedsits, sharing with other men or getting a room from parents, siblings or friends. So the same courts that effectively make these men homeless will then deny them overnight access on the grounds that they cannot provide suitable accommodation for their children. They become what is commonly referred to as ‘MacDonalds Dads’. If they are lucky and pay the ‘ransom’ they get a few hours access on Saturdays or Sundays and end up taking their children to MacDonalds, shopping centres, cinemas etc. but can have no normal quality time with their children. It becomes a totally artifical father/child relationship.
It is time those in positions of power took a long hard look at what they have inflicted on our citizens. Even though Family Law discriminates severely against men, it is bad for society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the greatest evil inflicted on the citizens of this State, by the State since the foundation of the State. The State’s response to marriage problems is to set up a system that exacerbates hostility, encourages parents to abdicate their responsibilities and drives parents into an expensive legal system, which plunders scarce family resources. Invariably men emerge as the supreme losers in these cases. Family Law is a multi-million euro industry, which survives and thrives by inciting and exploiting hatred between parents.
The architects of the Irish family law system have effectively imported the worst from abroad and inflicted it on the Irish people. The result is that we have a biased, anti-man system which exacerbates hostility, leaves a legacy of bitterness from which families never recover and enriches the legal profession. There is obviously a need for a radical overhaul of State interventions in family disputes. This must involve (1) the removal of family disputes from the adversarial family law system; (2) setting up alternative structures for resolving family disputes (3) enacting legislation which does not allow ‘victories and defeats’ but is based on concepts of justice, equality and the preservation of parental rights and responsibilities and (4) caters for the rights and interests of all affected family members, including men.
Roisin O'Shea thesis
Link to Thesis
The thesis by Roisin O' Shea which appeared in 2013 was one of the first attempts to take a close and sceptical look at the Family Courts system. It cast a cold eye on the way men have been treated for decades and suffered systematic discrimination.
This thesis deserves a close reading. It is lengthy so below we give some extracts from it with page numbers attached:
Page xi
Family law in Ireland operates in a highly discretionary regime based on individualised determinations of need. Most family law applications are brought by women, and there is now clear evidence that outcomes for men are poor, particularly where men are not the primary carer of children.
The Domestic Violence (Amendment Act) 2002 provides that an interim barring order may be sought exparte, without notice to the other party, if the court believes that the circumstances warrant such an order.
Such an order may not exceed Eight working days, unless confirmed during that period by the court.
The overwhelming majority, 94.2%, of orders previously granted or sought under the Domestic Violence Acts, submitted on evidence, or the subject of an application, were against the husband.
87.5% of barring orders were issued or sought against the husband,
100% of safety orders were issued or sought against the husband, 100% of protection orders were issued or sought against the husband, and 100% of interim barring orders were issued or sought against the husband.
Page 131
Of great concern was the common approach of the court to make child maintenance orders where the payer, in 100% of cases the father, was only in receipt of State benefits, the average State benefit
observed being €200 per week. The national insolvency guidelines for 2013 state the subsistence level, i.e. the basic amount a single person requires to live on, as €237.65 per week.
The court, in the main,prioritised the legal, moral and constitutional obligation on the payor parent to
financially provide for their child/children, making orders that effectively brought many payor fathers below subsistence level, and took no account of their financial ability to exercise “access” in terms of any transport costs and providing for the child/children during those periods.
This musical game of chairs,in cases of financial hardship, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, makes little sense where Peter and Paul are both the same entity, the Irish State
Page 371
Dad’s Army
Recommended reform in relation to Rights of Unmarried Fathers
Abridged versionof winning essay
Introduction
Unless we rectify the current dearth of rights for unmarried fathers, Ireland is likely to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights.
Page 481
There is no automatic right in the Republic of Ireland for fathers to care for or bring up their children, a situation repeatedly highlighted by vocal unmarried father and journalist, John Waters, who maintains that the “attitude of officialdom and the wider society to this issue, is that the welfare, wishes, and needs of the mother are the only matter to be considered”
.
Page 482
Reform is needed to protect the best interests of the child; by ensuring that the child and its father can have a relationship protected by way of an amendment to existing guardianship legislation.
Page 373 In the recent Mr G case the High Court, for the first time, gave recognition to the rights of unmarried fathers in Ireland under European law.
Mr Justice McKechnie referred to Article 8 of the ECHR which guarantees the protection of family life; finding that the couple “constituted at all relevant times, a de facto family within the meaning of that
Article. Mr. Justice McKechnie set down tests that unmarried fathers may be able to avail of to invoke their rights such as: how long the couple lived together; the length of the relationship, and the ways in which the parents showed their commitment to one another.
Page 376 Without addressing the absence of the rights of
unmarried fathers we continue to ensure that the best interests of the child are not served in this jurisdiction, and that the rights of marital parents trump both the rights of children and those of natural fathers.
QUOTES FROM A JOURNAL ARTICLE on O'Sheas's thesis:
The Journal 21 Sept. 2010 Cathy Hayes
A new study has found that 99 percent of Irish husbands lose their homes during divorces.
An Irish graduate law student, Róisín O’Shea, has observed that during family law cases courts give one spouse the right to live alone in the family home. The husbands are favored only one percent of the time.
In seven out of ten cases the judge ordered a transfer of the property into the wife’s name.
During 160 contested cases when an order was made to sell the home the wife received more than half of the proceeds in 25 percent of the cases. During the other 75 percent the proceeds were split.
The graduate student has observed 493 judicial separation and divorce cases in Dublin, Cork and the southeast since October 2008. She observed that 73 percent of judicial separation and 54 percent of divorce application were filed by the wives.
“To date, all of the contested cases that I have observed were brought by the wife," said O’Shea, while speaking to the Sunday Business Post. “I have not seen a single case where the wife was ordered to pay maintenance for children or a spouse.
Without fail, where maintenance is at issue, it is the husband who has been ordered to pay.”
She also pointed out that in most contested maintenance cases the husbands argued that they were being denied access to their children. Although many of the father’s asked for joint custody she said that she had only observed this in two cases.
With falling property prices in Ireland the courts are also seeing people returning to the courts to re-visit financial orders when people have in negative equity or in arrears of mortgage payment.
In many cases she said “Agreements reached cannot be performed and maintenance orders cannot be discharged…This means that the judiciary are increasingly faced with the reality of debt division, rather than equitable provision."
Reformed and Consolidated Domestic Violence Bill
in which parents – almost always mothers - defy orders
to let the other parent have contact.'
Daily Mail (Feb. 2 '16) citing U.K. Justice Coleridge
Key Points
- Men suffer severe injustices as a matter of routine in family law.
- These injustices have a devastating effect on the lives of many men, some of whom resort to suicide.
- These injustices have their roots in legislation, structures and practices which have evolved over the years without any account having been taken of the needs and interests of men and fathers.
- Family legislation has been shaped exclusively by women’s organisations and the legal profession and geared towards the needs and desires of those two groups to the exclusion of men and fathers.
- AIM - the Family Law Reform Group, which was founded in 1972, was the most influential organisation in shaping the Family Law System. This Group consisted exclusively of women, most of whom were lawyers, and was focussed exclusively on women’s issues.
- Some account was taken of the needs of children but these were dealt with exclusively from women’s perspective.
- The main issues in any family separation/divorce case are (1) children, (2) finances and (3) property. Legislation and practices dictate that women are guaranteed victory under all three headings.
- These victories and defeats are not marginal. Women ‘get’ the children, ‘get’ the family home and ‘get’ most of the family finances regardless of who earns it.
- Men are routinely evicted from their family homes for no justifiable reason (section 10 of the Family Law Act, 1995); removed from or marginalised in their children’s lives and left living in poverty in sub-standard accommodation while continuing to pay rent or mortgage on the family home.
- No-one, not even a spouse, should have the power to evict a law-abiding citizen, who pays his way, from his home. If section 10(2) contained a provision that guaranteed victory to men and gave them the power to remove their wives from the family home so that they can have a separation there would be a public outcry.
- Women can make false allegations of child abuse with total impunity as they are aware that even if their lies are exposed they will suffer no penalties.
- As a result of a Supreme Court judgement women are entitled to move their children out of the country thereby removing terminating the father/child relationship contrary to the Hague Convention. (Father/child murder/suicide in Kerry).
- The Civil Partnership Act imposes the marriage-like provisions of that Act on cohabiting couples who have not entered into a civil partnership or who have signed an agreement stating explicitly that they do not wish to do so.
- Citizens are never told of the civil law implications of entering into a civil marriage especially the draconian anti-man provisions governing marriage breakdown.
Family Law – General Election 2016
The Irish family law system is deeply flawed and causing much hardship to ordinary citizens, especially men and children. The injustices suffered by men have their roots in structures, attitudes and legislation, which was formulated without any account being taken of the needs and interests of men and fathers. Family legislation, which has evolved over the last thirty years, has been shaped exclusively by women’s organisations and the legal profession and is geared towards the needs and desires of those two groups to the exclusion of men. The organisation which promoted the evolution of the family law industry in the 1970s was ‘AIM – The Family Law Reform Group’, which consisted entirely of women, many of whom were lawyers. To get a glimpse of the extent to which men’s rights and interests were excluded from the development of the family law system one need only analyse the intense debate which preceded the Divorce referendum in 1995. In all the voluminous articles, papers, discussions etc. you will find numerous debates on whether or not divorce is good for women and children with both sides using women and children’s well-being to support their arguments. In all the debates in newspapers, TV, radio etc. you will not find a single reference to whether or not divorce was good for men and fathers. The only reference to men was a controversial poster which demonised fathers. The Commission on the Family which was set up after that referendum was dominated by women’s groups and the legal profession with absolutely no representation for men. A few individuals made submissions on men/father’s issues to the Commission but these were ignored by the feminist-dominated Commission. The time has come to give men a voice and allow men’s needs and interests to inform the formulation of family legislation and thereby end the injustices being inflicted on men. Some people and poorly resourced groups have tried to right these grievous wrongs but those in positions of power and influence prevented them from doing so.
There is now a growing awareness of the fact that the system is gender biased – it is extremely pro-woman and anti-man. This is proven by the outcome of virtually all family law cases. The three major issues involved in family law cases are (1) children (2) the family home and (3) finances. Women invariably emerge as supreme victors under all three headings. Women ‘get’ the children and with that prize goes the family home (and sometimes other property) and most of the family finances, regardless of who earns it. Men are routinely evicted from their homes without any reason (section 10 of the Family Law Act, 1995), removed from or marginalised in their children’s lives and, in most cases, left living in poverty in sub-standard accommodation often still paying mortgages etc. for the family home. They are effectively stripped of their dignity, depressed, their self-esteem shattered, and they are often suicidal. The victories and defeats are not marginal or partial, they are extreme – women get everything; men lose everything. It is hardly surprising therefore that the vast majority of judicial separations are initiated by women. The biased nature of the system is reflected in the advices given to men by solicitors. Men are conditioned to accept that women will get everything simply because they are women.
Any objective study of the comparative affects of family law decisions on the lives of men and women would show that it is extremely biased. The system has been designed to insulate women from the hardships of marriage/relationship breakdown by imposing all the hardships on men. In virtually all cases men have their parenthood severely diminished, are required to leave the family home and live in sub-standard accommodation and continue in the role of provider for their wives and children regardless of the hardship imposed on them. The extremes of victory and defeat, which are inherent in the system, exacerbate hostility and fuel this growing industry. Such extremes of victory and defeat are unnecessary and could be avoided by more creative initiatives to support families in times of crisis. Men are not informed of these facts prior to marriage – not even on State-financed pre-marriage courses.
Most men living in intact relationships are unaware of the extent to which their lives can be ‘shattered’ by the Family Law System. They foolishly believe that, because they are good fathers, good providers, good citizens and pay all their bills, their position as fathers, and their right to live in their own homes, is secure. But they are wrong, as many discover to their cost when they come in contact with the family law system. Their fatherhood is not their property, nor their children’s. It can be destroyed or diminished by judges at the behest of vindictive spouses or partners supported by highly trained professional lawyers. Perhaps the most devastating and disempowering discovery for such men is that they can be unilaterally evicted from their homes, for no reason other than to facilitate the separation process – a third millennium version of the Penal Laws.
There is a widespread fallacy, even among those who campaign for justice in family law, which is, that the law as written is not discriminatory – it is only discriminatory in its application. This is untrue. The law as written does discriminate against men. The legislation is designed to address women’s concerns only and totally ignores men’s concerns. It is framed in such a way as to ensure that women have all the advantages at men’s expense. For example the various Acts make ample provision for the well-being of ‘dependant spouses’ (mostly women) but make no mention of the well-being of the other spouse. In fact he doesn’t even merit a title (let’s call him the ‘provider spouse’).
One of the most serious examples of this discriminatory legislation is to be found in section 10 of the Family Law Act, 1995 which deals with the family home. It provides that a court shall take into consideration “that proper and secure accommodation should,…… be provided for a spouse who is wholly or mainly dependent on the other spouse …”. The court is not obliged to have any regard to the provider spouse’s need for proper and secure accommodation or his ongoing parental role. It is the legislation that needs to be changed. Until the powers to evict men from their homes is repealed the legalised destruction of fatherhood and persecution of men will continue. The time has come to demand that our legislators remove such draconian powers from the courts and from the statute book.
Having been evicted from his home, the separated father must then try to ‘rescue’ his fatherhood. But, unless he is in a financial position to either rent or buy another house, fulfilling his role as father in any meaningful way becomes an impossible task. With the burden of maintaining his wife and children, continuing to pay rent/mortgage on the family home as well as accommodate and provide for himself, very few separated fathers can afford a second house. Most end up in bedsits, sharing with other men or getting a room from parents, siblings or friends. So the same courts that effectively make these men homeless will then deny them overnight access on the grounds that they cannot provide suitable accommodation for their children. They become what is commonly referred to as ‘MacDonalds Dads’. If they are lucky and pay the ‘ransom’ they get a few hours access on Saturdays or Sundays and end up taking their children to MacDonalds, shopping centres, cinemas etc. but can have no normal quality time with their children. It becomes a totally artifical father/child relationship.
It is time those in positions of power took a long hard look at what they have inflicted on our citizens. Even though Family Law discriminates severely against men, it is bad for society as a whole. It is undoubtedly the greatest evil inflicted on the citizens of this State, by the State since the foundation of the State. The State’s response to marriage problems is to set up a system that exacerbates hostility, encourages parents to abdicate their responsibilities and drives parents into an expensive legal system, which plunders scarce family resources. Invariably men emerge as the supreme losers in these cases. Family Law is a multi-million euro industry, which survives and thrives by inciting and exploiting hatred between parents.
The architects of the Irish family law system have effectively imported the worst from abroad and inflicted it on the Irish people. The result is that we have a biased, anti-man system which exacerbates hostility, leaves a legacy of bitterness from which families never recover and enriches the legal profession. There is obviously a need for a radical overhaul of State interventions in family disputes. This must involve (1) the removal of family disputes from the adversarial family law system; (2) setting up alternative structures for resolving family disputes (3) enacting legislation which does not allow ‘victories and defeats’ but is based on concepts of justice, equality and the preservation of parental rights and responsibilities and (4) caters for the rights and interests of all affected family members, including men.
Roisin O'Shea thesis
Link to Thesis
The thesis by Roisin O' Shea which appeared in 2013 was one of the first attempts to take a close and sceptical look at the Family Courts system. It cast a cold eye on the way men have been treated for decades and suffered systematic discrimination.
This thesis deserves a close reading. It is lengthy so below we give some extracts from it with page numbers attached:
Page xi
Family law in Ireland operates in a highly discretionary regime based on individualised determinations of need. Most family law applications are brought by women, and there is now clear evidence that outcomes for men are poor, particularly where men are not the primary carer of children.
The Domestic Violence (Amendment Act) 2002 provides that an interim barring order may be sought exparte, without notice to the other party, if the court believes that the circumstances warrant such an order.
Such an order may not exceed Eight working days, unless confirmed during that period by the court.
The overwhelming majority, 94.2%, of orders previously granted or sought under the Domestic Violence Acts, submitted on evidence, or the subject of an application, were against the husband.
87.5% of barring orders were issued or sought against the husband,
100% of safety orders were issued or sought against the husband, 100% of protection orders were issued or sought against the husband, and 100% of interim barring orders were issued or sought against the husband.
Page 131
Of great concern was the common approach of the court to make child maintenance orders where the payer, in 100% of cases the father, was only in receipt of State benefits, the average State benefit
observed being €200 per week. The national insolvency guidelines for 2013 state the subsistence level, i.e. the basic amount a single person requires to live on, as €237.65 per week.
The court, in the main,prioritised the legal, moral and constitutional obligation on the payor parent to
financially provide for their child/children, making orders that effectively brought many payor fathers below subsistence level, and took no account of their financial ability to exercise “access” in terms of any transport costs and providing for the child/children during those periods.
This musical game of chairs,in cases of financial hardship, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, makes little sense where Peter and Paul are both the same entity, the Irish State
Page 371
Dad’s Army
Recommended reform in relation to Rights of Unmarried Fathers
Abridged versionof winning essay
Introduction
Unless we rectify the current dearth of rights for unmarried fathers, Ireland is likely to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights.
Page 481
There is no automatic right in the Republic of Ireland for fathers to care for or bring up their children, a situation repeatedly highlighted by vocal unmarried father and journalist, John Waters, who maintains that the “attitude of officialdom and the wider society to this issue, is that the welfare, wishes, and needs of the mother are the only matter to be considered”
.
Page 482
Reform is needed to protect the best interests of the child; by ensuring that the child and its father can have a relationship protected by way of an amendment to existing guardianship legislation.
Page 373 In the recent Mr G case the High Court, for the first time, gave recognition to the rights of unmarried fathers in Ireland under European law.
Mr Justice McKechnie referred to Article 8 of the ECHR which guarantees the protection of family life; finding that the couple “constituted at all relevant times, a de facto family within the meaning of that
Article. Mr. Justice McKechnie set down tests that unmarried fathers may be able to avail of to invoke their rights such as: how long the couple lived together; the length of the relationship, and the ways in which the parents showed their commitment to one another.
Page 376 Without addressing the absence of the rights of
unmarried fathers we continue to ensure that the best interests of the child are not served in this jurisdiction, and that the rights of marital parents trump both the rights of children and those of natural fathers.
QUOTES FROM A JOURNAL ARTICLE on O'Sheas's thesis:
The Journal 21 Sept. 2010 Cathy Hayes
A new study has found that 99 percent of Irish husbands lose their homes during divorces.
An Irish graduate law student, Róisín O’Shea, has observed that during family law cases courts give one spouse the right to live alone in the family home. The husbands are favored only one percent of the time.
In seven out of ten cases the judge ordered a transfer of the property into the wife’s name.
During 160 contested cases when an order was made to sell the home the wife received more than half of the proceeds in 25 percent of the cases. During the other 75 percent the proceeds were split.
The graduate student has observed 493 judicial separation and divorce cases in Dublin, Cork and the southeast since October 2008. She observed that 73 percent of judicial separation and 54 percent of divorce application were filed by the wives.
“To date, all of the contested cases that I have observed were brought by the wife," said O’Shea, while speaking to the Sunday Business Post. “I have not seen a single case where the wife was ordered to pay maintenance for children or a spouse.
Without fail, where maintenance is at issue, it is the husband who has been ordered to pay.”
She also pointed out that in most contested maintenance cases the husbands argued that they were being denied access to their children. Although many of the father’s asked for joint custody she said that she had only observed this in two cases.
With falling property prices in Ireland the courts are also seeing people returning to the courts to re-visit financial orders when people have in negative equity or in arrears of mortgage payment.
In many cases she said “Agreements reached cannot be performed and maintenance orders cannot be discharged…This means that the judiciary are increasingly faced with the reality of debt division, rather than equitable provision."
Reformed and Consolidated Domestic Violence Bill
Reformed and Consolidated Domestic Violence Bill
In July 2015 Minister Fitzgerald published the Heads of A Bill which was designed to consolidate and extend existing legislation in this area.
In July 2015 Minister Fitzgerald published the Heads of A Bill which was designed to consolidate and extend existing legislation in this area.