The Court of Appeal has upheld a family law settlement after rejecting a woman’s claim that pressure from her own legal team made the agreement unenforceable.
The anonymised parties have been involved in High Court family law proceedings since 2013. Following a 15-day hearing, orders dealing with their financial affairs were made in January 2015. Neither side appealed those orders.
Further disputes later arose. In April 2023, the wife sought to reopen aspects of the case. She alleged, among other matters, that the husband had previously misrepresented a company’s Revenue liability as €1.42 million. The husband disputed her case.
When competing motions came before the High Court in January 2024, negotiations took place over three days. Terms were first signed on 16 January and then renegotiated. An amended settlement, containing improvements for the wife, was signed on 18 January and made an order of the court while she was present and represented by solicitors and counsel.
She subsequently claimed her lawyers had placed her under extreme pressure and threatened to stop representing her if she refused the agreement. Crucially, she accepted that her husband and his lawyers knew nothing about that alleged pressure.
The High Court refused to set the settlement aside in December 2024. The Court of Appeal has now upheld that decision.
Mr Justice Binchy said a party seeking to invalidate a settlement for duress must establish recognised legal grounds. Where the alleged pressure comes from that party’s own advisers, the other party must at least have known, or be treated as having notice, of the duress. That was not alleged here.
The court also rejected arguments concerning the earlier Revenue dispute, holding that those matters had been resolved by the settlement itself. A new argument based on the wife’s health was also rejected because it had not been raised in the High Court and was unsupported by medical evidence in the appeal.
The appeal was dismissed. The court’s preliminary view was that the husband should receive his appeal costs, subject to any further submissions from the wife.