Family law services
Thirteen practice areas, one discipline: proper provision built on disclosure, valuation and structure. Each page below sets out the law, the practical issues and the questions most often asked at first consultation.
Divorce in Ireland is governed by the Family Law (Divorce) Act 1996, as amended, and by Article 41.3.2 of the Constitution. A court may grant a decree of divorce only where the spouses ha...
Judicial separation under the Judicial Separation and Family Law Reform Act 1989 allows spouses to obtain court-ordered financial provision without waiting for the divorce living apart pe...
The phrase ample resources comes from the Irish courts themselves: cases where the assets comfortably exceed the reasonable needs of both spouses, so the question is not how to stretch re...
No category of divorce is more distinctively Irish, or more difficult, than the farm case. The farm is usually the family home, the family income, the product of several generations, and ...
When one or both spouses own a company, the divorce acquires a second set of stakeholders: the business itself, its employees, its bank and sometimes co-shareholders who are strangers to ...
After the family home and the farm or business, pensions are usually the largest asset in a divorce, and the most commonly misunderstood. A pension cannot be dealt with by agreement betwe...
Wealth that arrives from outside the marriage, by inheritance, gift or family trust, or that was built before the marriage began, occupies contested ground in Irish family law. It is not ...
Prenuptial agreements are not enforceable as contracts that bind an Irish family court, but that headline understates their usefulness. A properly prepared agreement is part of the factua...
Every financial remedy in Irish family law is built on disclosure. The Affidavit of Means, a sworn schedule of assets, income, debts, liabilities and outgoings, is the foundation document...
Maintenance is the recurring cash flow of family law: periodic payments by one spouse or parent for the support of the other spouse and dependent children. It can be agreed, ordered on an...
Marriages with an international dimension, a spouse working abroad, property in Spain or Portugal, a UK connection, assets held through foreign structures, raise a preliminary question be...
Arrangements for children run alongside the financial case in every separation, and they are governed by a single statutory lodestar: under section 3 of the Guardianship of Infants Act 19...
Most separations do not need a contested hearing, and the Mediation Act 2017 obliges solicitors to advise every client about mediation before issuing family proceedings. This practice tak...