The High Court has ordered a father to pay €111,000 in child maintenance after finding that he gave false evidence about his means and deliberately altered a Government letter to conceal more than €145,000 in income.
The anonymised case concerned A.C.’s appeal against a February 2024 Circuit Court order dealing with financial provision for the former couple’s two dependent children. Their 2021 divorce agreement required E.R. to pay €100 per child monthly and 70% of specified expenses.
The Circuit Court had refused to increase maintenance and reduced E.R.’s share of those expenses to 50%.
On appeal, Ms Justice Nessa Cahill found that circumstances had materially changed. The children now reside almost entirely with their mother, whose means are limited by terminal Stage IV metastatic breast cancer and an inability to work.
The central difficulty was E.R.’s evidence about his finances. He repeatedly told the High Court that he had earned nothing since March 2023. However, a Department of Social Protection document recorded earnings of €145,767.41 between December 2024 and December 2025.
The court found that E.R. had supplied another version of the same Department letter from which the paragraph disclosing those earnings had been removed. The judge was satisfied that he had deliberately manipulated the document to mislead A.C. and the court. She also found serious concerns surrounding a 2023 redundancy letter and noted that his 2021 affidavit of means had disclosed salary of €85,310 while later records showed gross earnings of €321,892.77 that year.
Because E.R.’s evidence about his means could not be trusted, the court said it had no reliable picture of his true resources. It treated his litigation misconduct as a relevant factor in making proper provision for the children.
The court ordered €111,000 in maintenance, payable in four instalments through November 2027, restored E.R.’s 70% liability for specified child expenses and ordered payment of €4,823.48 in outstanding expenses. E.R. was also ordered to pay A.C.’s legal costs.