A man demanded his unfaithful wife sell her €50,000 car and drive a 1995 Opel instead as one of his conditions for moving back into the family home, a court heard on Monday.
At a family law court in Munster, the woman said her husband moved out after he found out she had had an eight-week affair with a local married man.
The woman said her husband made three demands for him to return to the family home: that she see a psychiatrist; that she give him €65,000 of her redundancy money; and that she sell her expensive car and drive a 1995 Opel Corsa instead.
“They were the three conditions that I had to agree to, but I didn’t agree to them. I did give him €20,000 in cash,” the woman said, during her unsuccessful application for a safety order against her former husband.
“The pillar that my safety order application stands on is the fact that my kids are being affected and I am being emotionally and psychologically tortured for four years. He is a man who can’t let go and accept that our marriage is over,” she said.
“The man is a good father, but at times he doesn’t realise that he is affecting [the children]. I want my kids to have a chance of a normal life.”
Questions
The woman said her husband moved out of the family home for the summer after finding out about the affair and only moved back in after receiving the €20,000.
She said he would ask her questions over and over again about the affair.
“I was so sorry and contrite and every day I told him that,” she said.
After the husband learned his wife had resumed contact with the other man a year later, she arrived home to find he had packed up her belongings.
He later moved out.
The woman said her husband threatened her at one stage. She said that around that time, the HSE and gardaí received a number of anonymous reports alleging child neglect in her care.
The reports were all investigated and nothing arose from them.
One night later that year, the husband arrived outside the family home and started shouting up to her: “Who are you in bed with now? ”
A year later, he allegedly pinned her up against a set of double doors. She suffered bruising as a result and made a formal complaint to gardaí.
The judge ruled the threshold for a safety order had not been met and refused the application.