The High Court refused an application by two minor beneficiaries to stop the sale of lands at Kilclare, County Offaly, and ordered that their proceedings against one defendant be struck out as bound to fail.
The dispute concerns a 2014 will by Laurence (otherwise Larry) Bracken, which left his lands to his nephew Colm Bracken for life, then to Colm’s sons, Joseph and Thomas Bracken. The lands were registered in the name of Larry’s brother Tom. Earlier proceedings between the personal representatives of the brothers’ estates settled on the basis that Larry’s estate held a two-thirds beneficial interest. Under the settlement, the lands were to be sold, with two-thirds of the net proceeds going to Larry’s estate and one-third to Tom’s.
The court approved that settlement in December 2022, with Colm Bracken represented at the hearing and raising no objection on behalf of himself or his children. The judgment records that the personal representatives confirmed the children would receive the share due under Larry’s will, after valuation of Colm’s life interest.
In July 2023, the children, through their mother Miriam Bracken, obtained an interim order from another High Court judge preventing an auction scheduled for that day. At the later hearing, Justice Brian O’Moore considered the mother’s application for interlocutory relief and the second defendant’s separate motion to dismiss the action against her.
Justice O’Moore found that material information had not been disclosed to the judge who granted the interim order, including correspondence about the settlement and allegations concerning Colm’s efforts to disrupt the sale. The judge also found that the earlier settlement approval had been presented incompletely. He concluded that the court had been seriously and deliberately misled at the ex parte hearing, and that this weighed against further equitable relief.
On the substance, the judge rejected the claimed risk that the children’s bequest would fail if the lands were sold. He construed Larry’s gift of “all my lands” as including his beneficial interest, which the settlement had fixed at two-thirds. The judge said the children had not shown a serious issue to be tried that could support an injunction, and that the orders sought would frustrate the court-approved settlement.
The judgment records that Miriam Bracken no longer disputed the one-third allocation to Tom’s estate and was not pursuing declarations that the lands belonged to Larry’s estate. The court refused the interlocutory relief and ordered the proceedings against Geraldine Claffey struck out as bound to fail and an abuse of process. The judgment does not state that the entire action against the first defendant was struck out.