By Gordon Deegan
A 63-year-old mother of six who broke the windows of her estranged husband’s tractor with a golf club in a row over an unpaid €200,000 martial debt has escaped a conviction.
This follows Judge Mary Larkin at Gort District Court today imposing a 12-month Probation Bond on the south Galway woman.
The woman has admitted to smashing windows of her husband’s tractor in August 2020 with a sand wedge golf club, at a time when the man hadn’t paid up €200,000 arising from a 2019 family law court separation agreement.
In court today (Thursday, March 23), Judge Larkin imposed the Probation Bond on the woman after being told that the woman’s ex-husband didn’t wish to make a victim impact statement.
Judge Larkin said: “I have read the Probation Report in detail and I remember the case quite clearly.
“Unfortunately, this matter is a a family matter and I am going to impose a Probation Bond for 12 months.”
Woman attacked tractor with golf club
In the incident, a daughter of the estranged couple videoed her mother’s golf club assault on the tractor on her smartphone and the footage was played to the court last year when evidence was heard.
Judge Larkin found the woman guilty of criminal damage of the tractor and the possession of an article during a dispute, but did not record a conviction, and told her “you took the law into your own hands wielding the golf club. You can’t go around wielding a golf club at anyone”.
Solicitor for the woman, Charles Foley told the court that there was “a huge residue of bitterness” over the then unpaid €200,000.
The couple reached a court agreement at the Family Law Court in February 2019 that the man would pay €200,000 by July 2019, and the woman would surrender her interest in the family home.
The solicitor added that the €200,000 was not paid over by the man until April 2021 – however, this was only after his estranged wife forcibly moved back into the family home and the farmer moved out of the home to live in Gort.
The woman told Judge Larkin: “I had nowhere to live. He owns three houses.”
Judge Larkin commented: “I kind of half admire her for moving back into the house. Many is the person who was left waiting for their money in family law cases and they have to make do in the meantime.
“She is a woman who has her wits about her. She moved back into the house and put the maximum pressure on her estranged spouse to pay the money.”
The man said that the damage done to the tractor was put at €908.
However, Judge Larkin said that she wouldn’t be asking the ex-wife to pay the cost of the tractor damage as the husband had not paid interest on the delayed €200,000 payment.
Evidence
In evidence concerning the incident, the husband told the court that only a bar on the tractor door “is all that saved her from hitting me” during the August 10, 2020 incident.
The man said that he had gone with his daughter to check on cattle in a field beside the family home which is near Gort.
He said: “Only for the bar that was there that you pull in the door with, she had me got. That is all that stopped her.”
The man described as a ‘lie’ an allegation made by the defence that he had called his ex-wife and her parents ‘tinkers’.
The man said that there was a delay in paying the €200,000 over as “I was trying to sell, it was slow to sell the land”.
In a cautioned statement given to Garda Anthony Davoren at her door after the incident, the ex-wife told Garda Davoren that she used the golf stick when her ex-husband drove at her with the tractor.
The woman said that after she struck the tractor with the golf club she told her ex-husband “get out or next time you will get it”.
Her solicitor told Judge Larkin that his client was under a huge amount of stress at the time and in response, Judge Larkin said: “She might have been under stress but she was able to create stress.”