A court has been asked to settle a dispute between a Dublin lesbian couple over the proceeds from their €470,000 former home.
Judge Patricia Ryan heard yesterday in the Circuit Civil Court that Ms Theresa Murtagh, now of Monksfield Heights, Clondalkin, was seeking a 50 per cent interest in a house she shared with Ms Elizabeth Kelly, Woodstown Road, Knocklyon.
When asked if the matter should not be properly dealt with in the family law courts, Mr Daithí Mac Carthaigh, for Ms Kelly, said lesbian relationships wore not recognised under Irish law. Mr Cormac Ó Dulacháin SC, for Ms Murtagh, told the court the couple had not merely been lodgers but had a shared life.
Ms Murtagh told the court in an affidavit she had started a relationship with Kelly in 1984 and had begun cohabiting first in rented and then "joint interest" property. They had lived in the Knocklyon house until their break-up in October 2000.
She said the properties had been registered in Ms Kelly's name but it had always been agreed and understood from the outset that they both had a 50 per cent interest in each of the properties in which they had cohabited.
Ms Murtagh told the court the Knocklyon property had now been sold and she was deeply concerned her half interest would be dissipated by Ms Kelly. She is seeking a mareva injunction freezing her share.
Ms Kelly told the court the Knocklyon house had been sold for €471,000 and that €327,000 remained following the discharge of outstanding debts. She had no intention of dissipating the net proceeds. She claimed to have been the main wage-earner and payer of property and household bills and said she had bought Ms Murtagh cars and taken her on holidays. Their relationship had broken up after she became suspicious Ms Murtagh was involved in an affair with another woman.
Ms Kelly denied in her affidavit that she had banned Ms Murtagh from the Knocklyon house and alleged that on one occasion after having invited her in for tea she had conducted a "sit-in" which had ended only on the arrival of gardaí.
Judge Ryan, on an undertaking by Ms Kelly not to dispose of the disputed proceeds, adjourned Ms Murtagh's application to allow her to enter a replying affidavit.