The High Court has affirmed a Circuit Court ruling that Ms A was domiciled in Country Q when she instituted divorce proceedings there in 1995, allowing that divorce to be recognised in Ireland.
Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered the judgment on 11 May 2023 in an appeal brought by Mr B. He agreed with the Circuit Court’s decision of 11 May 2022 that Ms A had acquired a domicile of choice in Country Q by 28 July 1995, the date she presented her divorce petition. The High Court’s order was to affirm the Circuit Court judgment and order.
Ms A married Mr X in Ireland in 1983. She told the court that he repeatedly assaulted her. She left Ireland for Country Q in 1988, returned briefly, then left again in July 1989. The judge relied on her evidence that she “couldn’t, couldn’t stay” and was “never, never coming back”. He found nothing showed she had changed that intention by the time she began divorce proceedings in Country Q.
Ms A and Mr B worked and lived together in Country Q. Their child remained in Ireland in the care of Ms A’s parents-in-law, and Ms A visited and spoke with the child. The judge considered her return to Country Q after attending Mr B’s father’s funeral in Ireland in 1992, her continued life there, and the couple’s purchase of a family home in Country Q around 1995 or 1996. He said these circumstances supported the conclusion that she had made a permanent home there.
The judge distinguished Ms A’s intention from Mr B’s. Mr B had said he intended eventually to return to Ireland and start a business, but the court found that did not establish Ms A shared that intention. The couple returned to Ireland in late 1998. They married in Country Q that November, separated in 2002 and did not live together again.
The appeal concerned domicile for the purpose of recognising the Country Q divorce under the Domicile and Recognition of Foreign Divorces Act 1986. The Act’s relevant test, as described in the judgment, looks to domicile when divorce proceedings are instituted. The High Court concluded Ms A had discharged the significant burden of showing she abandoned her Irish domicile of origin and acquired a domicile of choice in Country Q. It affirmed the Circuit Court’s decision; it did not determine the parties’ later marital or financial matters.