Sunday Business Post - Sunday, 26 September 2010

Husbands the losers in divorce cases

By Kieron Wood

Husbands are being ejected from their homes in 99 per cent of cases where the family law courts are giving one spouse a sole right of residence, according to a new study.

The study was carried out by law graduate Róisín O'Shea, who was given permission to observe family law cases, which are ordinarily held in private.

She said that, where the courts gave one spouse the right to live alone in the family home, husbands were favoured in only 1 per cent of applications.

Judges ordered the transfer of the property into the wife's sole name in almost seven out of ten cases.

In 160 contested cases relating to family homes, where an order was made to sell the home, the wife received more than half the proceeds in a quarter of cases, while the proceeds were split evenly between the spouses in the remaining cases.

Since October 2008,O'Shea has observed 493 judicial separation and divorce cases in Dublin, Cork and the southeast.

She said 73 per cent of judicial separation cases and 54 per cent of divorce applications were brought by women.

"To date, all of the contested cases that I have observed were brought by the wife," said O'Shea. "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 said that in most contested maintenance cases, fathers argued that they were being denied access to their children.

While many fathers asked for joint custody, O'Shea said she had seen the courts order this in only two cases.

O'Shea also said that the impact of falling property prices was becoming evident in family law proceedings. She had seen "a continuing procession" of people returning to the courts, seeking to re-visit financial orders.

In most cases she had seen this year, there was only "modest equity" in the family home, with many couples in negative equity or in arrears of mortgage payments. "Agreements reached cannot be performed and maintenance orders cannot be discharged," she said.

"This means that the judiciary are increasingly faced with the reality of debt division, rather than equitable provision."

The survey will be discussed at an international family law conference next month in Maynooth.