The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by a woman challenging Irish recognition of a New York divorce granted more than two decades earlier.
P K, otherwise C, had begun High Court proceedings in 1999 seeking a divorce from T K under the Family Law (Divorce) Act 1996. The parties had married in New York in 1963 and later lived mainly in Ireland, where they raised their three children.
A New York court granted a divorce on January 7, 1980 on the husband's petition. The wife later argued that the decree should not be recognised in Ireland because neither party was domiciled in New York at the time. The husband's domicile remained Irish, so recognition depended on whether the wife had acquired or resumed a New York domicile.
The High Court found that she had. That meant the 1980 decree was recognised here and the 1963 marriage no longer subsisted in Irish law.
On appeal, the Supreme Court focused on the legal test for domicile: whether a person's conduct, viewed with all the surrounding circumstances, showed a settled intention to make a place their permanent home.
The wife had been born in New York in 1938 but later acquired an Irish domicile of choice. After the marriage broke down and a separation agreement was signed in 1977, she returned to New York. She maintained that the move was driven by economic necessity and that she always intended to return to Ireland.
Fennelly J said that explanation had to be considered, but the High Court judge had heard her evidence and was entitled to assess it alongside her conduct. Relevant factors included her return to New York, her family connections there, her statement that she was going back to seek an income and begin a new life, and her long subsequent residence in the United States.
The Supreme Court stressed that the relevant date was January 1980, although later conduct could shed light on her intentions at that time.
It found sufficient evidence to support the High Court's conclusion that she was domiciled in New York when the divorce was granted. The decree was therefore recognised in Irish law and the appeal was dismissed.