By Gordon Deegan
A judge has compared a bitter family row over a farm, estimated to be worth €1 million, to John B Keane’s The Field and the 1980’s American TV soap opera, Dallas.
Judge Alec Gabbett heard details of the family row involving a mother and son at the Family Law Court.
The mother had applied for a barring order and a safety order against her farmer son.
The judge was told that the son, who has won awards for farming, leases the farm from his mother after her husband and his father died a number of years ago leaving the farm to his widow.
Family row over farm
A solicitor for the son, Mairead Doyle, told the court that the two had fallen out after the mother “reneged on a written undertaking” to voluntarily transfer the farm to her son.
Doyle of Shannon based Carmody and Company Solicitors said that her client had spent around €500,000 over the years on upgrading the farm in the expectation that his mother would transfer the land to him.
Doyle also said that the mother had stated in correspondence in September 2021 that she was going to transfer the land to her son but in subsequent correspondence in May of this year outlined that she had changed her mind.
The mother said in court that the September 2021 letter had been made “under duress”.
She also told the court that she was in fear of her son and alleged that her son had pursued her to sign over the farm “through a campaign of intimidation and threatening behaviour”.
However Doyle countered that it was her client who had been a victim of harassment and a campaign of intimidation.
The solicitor put it to the mother in court that the domestic violence applications were “a tactic on your behalf to keep him off the land and if he comes near you can pick up the phone and have the Gardai come arrest him without warrant”.
The mother denied that this was the case and told the court: “I am in fear. I feel very, very vulnerable and I have my door locked day and night.”
No legal document
Judge Gabbett said that the late father had “left his instructions ‘on the pillow case’ effectively – that is the difficulty. There is no legal document which says what dad’s wishes were”.
Doyle said that the farmer is now living in rented accommodation in a town but had been living in a cow shed on the farm for a number of months over the summer.
The farmer told Judge Gabbett:
“I had no place to wash myself. I had to go to the toilet outside. I had no running water, no power. Nothing”.
The solicitor for the son claimed that “domestic violence legislation is being used as a tactic to force him from the land” which the mother denied.
In his evidence the son told Judge Gabbett that his sister wants the farm.
He said: “She wants the farm because she feels entitled and I don’t know why.”
The man said that he had not spoken to his sister since their father had died.
The son added:
“When my father was alive, we were the happiest people in the parish. The moment he died, these people turned and tried to make me out to be a bully which I wasn’t.”
Judge Gabbett said that he was not happy that the mother was creating a picture that her son “is some sort of monster”.
Applications dismissed
Judge Gabbett dismissed the mother’s application for a barring order and safety order against her farmer son.
The judge said he was dismissing the entire domestic violence proceedings against the man “for the simple reason that this is a civil matter”.
Judge Gabbett told both the mother and son that “this is a disgrace to your dead father and dead husband”.
He also added: There is no party to this without sin.”
Both mother and son were crying at the end of the hearing and the judge said to them:
“Ye have left an awful mess behind ye today. This is a disgrace to the both of ye. The two of ye should be absolutely mortified.
“I wonder if that poor man is turning around in his grave right now for all the perfect family evidence that we have heard,” Judge Gabbett added.
The judge also instructed the mother and son not to go “within an ass’s roar of each other” until they contest the land case before the civil courts.
He said: “They all need to be protected from each other.”