Woman gets barring order against ex over ‘most damaging’ behaviour

A High Court judge has granted a barring order against a man whose behaviour has had a "most damaging" effect on his ex-wife and their children.

Mr Justice Max Barrett said there were reasonable grounds for believing the safety and welfare of the woman and children required the court to issue the barring order.

The man had “remarkably” sought to justify striking his wife during their marriage, the judge said. The court had “set him right” on that as “there is no excuse for domestic violence”.

The man’s behaviour has had an inimical effect on his marriage and children and he has conducted himself so badly one of the children has a dissociative identity disorder and all have been “stressed out”, a phrase which seemed “too mild”. His relations with his children are “fraught”.

The judge said the couple’s daughter had recalled hours of arguments at home, always hearing her father’s voice the first to be raised, and being “forever afraid” for her mother. When her father asked her about good times at home, she could not recall when life had been “less than uneasy”.

He made the comments in a judgment on the woman’s appeal over aspects of proper provision orders made by the Circuit Court in divorce proceedings and seeking a barring order.

The judge reversed an order providing for sale of the family home once the youngest child turns 18, with the proceeds split 60/40 between the woman and man. Instead, he made orders which will see the home ultimately transferred into the woman’s sole ownership, without the need for the man’s consent, once the mortgage is cleared and she has met all mortgage repayments in the interim.

He noted the man has breached certain orders concerning payment of maintenance and the woman is budgeting on the basis he will continue not to pay those. The woman, whom the couple had agreed during the marriage would be a homemaker, has taken up employment and believed, as long as she continued in employment, she will be able to meet the full mortgage repayments and other payments, he noted.

The judge believed the man had understated both his income and savings and had made “dubious” claims of impecuniosity. He directed him to meet half of the educational expenses of the children and other maintenance payments but only if the woman be made redundant or should circumstances mean she cannot continue in employment.

Sense of decency

Both parties represented themselves in court and the judge said he was “taken aback” by the man’s behaviour towards the woman as he had never before seen such a “sustained and bitter” attack by one person on another. The man’s behaviour was “impossible” and he appeared, for whatever reason, to have “lost all sense of decency and propriety” in his dealings with his ex-wife.

The woman, as a human being, never mind the fact she is the mother of their children whom she is rearing “and rearing well, “is a being of dignity and worth, entitled at all times to respect”.

The man’s behaviour left the court in no doubt as to how “frighteningly unpleasant” home life must have been when the man was around and what a toll his behaviour must have taken on the woman and children.

The man had time and again at the hearing launched into an almost unceasing “stuck record” diatribe typically comprising allegations Ms A is a liar and mentally unwell when she was neither, the judge said. He also called her a “bunny boiler”, an insult which lowered the man even further in the court’s estimation, and further alleged officers of the court had been acting in a “great conspiracy” against him.

The “diatribe” also included claims he was a good father “which regretfully is not borne out by the evidence”.