The Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Mr L. arguing that European Union law prevented an Irish court from granting a divorce after a divorce obtained in another EU Member State in 1994.
In a judgment delivered on 9 May 2018, Ms Justice Dunne held that the earlier divorce was not recognised in Ireland and that later EU treaties and regulations did not retrospectively alter that position. The Court said the Irish divorce did not create an irreconcilable judgment from the perspective of Irish law.
The appeal concerned the Court of Appeal’s 2015 decision upholding a 2012 High Court decree of divorce and ancillary orders. The Supreme Court had granted leave on whether the Court of Appeal was correct to find that an Irish divorce could be granted in the circumstances under EU law, and, only if Mr L. succeeded on that issue, whether the costs order should stand.
The parties, Irish citizens, married in Dublin in 1980 and moved to another EU Member State in 1987. Ms T. returned to Ireland with their children in 1992. Mr L. obtained a divorce in that state in September 1994, after returning permanently to Ireland earlier that year. The Supreme Court had ruled in 2003 that the foreign divorce could not be recognised here because Mr L. had not established that he had acquired a domicile of choice there. In 2008, it also rejected his challenge to the Irish courts’ jurisdiction over the proceedings.
Ms T. began proceedings in Ireland in 2000. The High Court granted her a divorce in 2012, alongside orders concerning periodical payments, a cash sum, occupation of the homes the parties then occupied and succession rights. The Court of Appeal dismissed Mr L.’s appeal in 2015.
Mr L. argued that granting an Irish divorce was incompatible with EU principles of mutual recognition, legal certainty and free movement. The Supreme Court found that the EU regulations he relied on did not apply to the 1994 foreign divorce and that the Treaty provisions set out objectives and competences to be implemented through legislation. Neither supplied a basis for retrospectively recognising that divorce or preventing the Irish court from granting one, the judgment said. The Court also found no evidence that the Irish divorce had impeded Mr L.’s movement within the EU and declined to refer a question to the Court of Justice.
The judgment noted that Mr L. later married in Ireland after the Registrar General considered his eligibility. Dunne J. said he could not have married here without the Irish divorce and described his position in the proceedings as coming close to an abuse of process. The appeal was dismissed insofar as it concerned European law. The judgment does not state that the Supreme Court separately determined the appeal’s costs issue.