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1. The defendant husband and the plaintiff wife were married on the 3rd April, 1961. After their marriage they lived for some time in a flat and then, in October, 1963, the husband purchased a house for £2,200. A deposit of £220 was paid on the signing of the contract. The husband, who was a barman at the time of the marriage, was earning about £7 a week and had no savings. The wife had inherited £242 on the death of her father, and her mother provided her with some more money. She gave these sums to the husband so that he could pay the deposit and the expenses of the purchase of the house. He had obtained an advance from the Irish Permanent Building Society of £2,005 and this, together with the sums paid to him by the wife, made it possible for him to close the sale. She knew that the house was to be purchased in his name only and, although she had paid the moneys for the deposit and the expenses of the sale, she did not object to its transfer to him because, in her own words, “it was our home and I thought we jointly owned it.”

2. The mortgage for £2,005 was repayable over a period of 30 years by monthly instalments of £13.65. The husband was unable to pay the instalments on a number of occasions and the pass-book shows that payments of varying amounts were made irregularly. As the husband was unable to make the monthly payments, the wife got seven sums of £100 each at different times from her mother and brother to pay the instalments due to the Society. These sums were given by the wife to the husband so that he could pay the instalments: the total amount contributed by her to the purchase price of the house and the repayment of the mortgage was £1,027.

3. There are four children of the marriage, the oldest being 12 years old and the youngest 4 years old.

4. The husband remained at work as a barman until 1968 when he began to work as a self-employed electrician earning about £35 per week. In February, 1972, he was employed as an electrician and received a gross salary of £39 per week together with expenses which varied from week to week. His net salary in the first week of his employment in May, 1973, was £35.66 and in the last week of his employment with this firm in May, 1974, was £37.81. In addition he worked part-time as a barman during the evenings in the Horse Show bar and from the 3rd May, 1973, to the 7th November, 1974, he earned £1,306 from this work. This was an average weekly sum of about £18. His employment as an electrician ended in May, 1974. He registered for unemployment benefit in June, 1974, and continued to draw this at the rate of £30.85 until November when he obtained employment again.

5. The marriage was a happy one until 1967 when the husband began to insult and assault the wife, On many occasions he came back to the house late in the evening or early in the morning in a drunken condition. The relations between them became so bad that in 1971 she went with her children to reside with her mother where she remained for 10 months and returned only when the husband had promised that he would treat her well.

6. When she returned, he behaved towards her with some consideration for a short time but the former pattern of conduct soon appeared again. Although he was earning about £50 per week at this time he gave her £13 per week only to run the house and clothe the children. There are three bedrooms in the house and , at some time in 1973, he began to lock the large room when he was going out and took the key with him so that the wife was compelled to sleep with her children in one of the other rooms. In July, 1973, he turned off the electricity to the house and disconnected the telephone; in that month a most distressing episode occurred when he returned home late at night with his sister and began to play a guitar which he owned. The noise was deafening and the wife and the children were frightened, particularly as he and his sister were very drunk. There were many other assaults and quarrels and the Guards were sent for on a number of occasions. The husband continued to live in the house until October, 1974, when he left and went to live elsewhere. Since then the wife has been drawing home assistance. Though the husband paid the mortgage instalments and electricity bills for some time after he left, he has now ceased to do this.

7. In July, 1973, the wife brought proceedings against the husband under the Married Women’s Status Act, 1957, claiming that she was entitled to the house in equal shares with him. She also brought proceedings claiming custody of the children and payment for their maintenance. The proceedings were adjourned on many occasions at the request of the parties and ultimately the two actions were heard together in November, 1974.

8. When the matrimonial home is purchased in the name of a husband, either before or after a marriage, the wife does not become entitled, as wife, to any share in its ownership either because she occupies the status of wife or because she carries out household duties. In many cases, however, the wife contributes to the purchase price or mortgage instalments. Her contributions may be either by payment to the husband of moneys which she has inherited or earned, or by paying the expenses of the household so that he has the money which makes it possible for him to pay the mortgage instalments. Domestic arrangements in relation to the payment of debts or the sharing of expenses are almost always informal and the parties do not make agreements which have that precision which is necessary to make them enforceable as contracts in a court of law. When there is an agreement between them as to the ownership of the house which is in the husband’s name only, the Court will enforce it; but the number of cases in which this happens is small. The principles derived from the last century (when married women did not earn and when any property they had was usually settled) are of little assistance in determining the ownership of the matrimonial home when the wife has made contributions towards its purchase or towards the repayment of the mortgage instalments. Trying to infer what was the implied agreement which arose when payments were made or expenses paid by a wife is a futile task because, when the spouses are living happily together, they do not think of stipulating that payments by one of them are made to acquire a share in the matrimonial home or furniture.

9. I think that the correct and most useful approach to these difficult cases is to apply the concept of a trust to the legal relationship which arises when a wife makes payments towards the purchase of a house, or the repayment of the mortgage instalments, when the house is in the sole name of the husband. When this is done, he becomes a trustee for her of a share in the house and the size of the share depends upon the amount of the contributions which she has made towards the purchase or the repayment of the mortgage. I think that this view is supported by the decisions in Pettitt v. Pettitt [1970] AC 777; Gissing v. Gissing [1971] AC 886; McFarlane v. McFarlane [1972] N.I. 59; Hazell v. Hazell [1972] 1 W.L.R. 301 ; Kowalczuk v. Kowalczuk [1973] 1 W.L.R. 930 ; Heavey v. Heavey (1974) 111 I.L.T.R. 1 . This approach also has the advantage that it gives that flexibility which is essential in dealing with domestic matters.

10. In this case the original cost of the house was £2,200. There was no evidence of its present value but I do not think that this is relevant to the ascertainment of the interest to which the wife is entitled because the sums contributed by her, towards the original purchase at least, were paid in 1962 and her beneficial interest in the house arose not when her dispute with her husband started but when she made the payments. As the cost of the house was £2,200 plus the interest element in the mortgage repayments, and as she paid £1,027, I propose to hold that she is entitled to one half of the beneficial interest in the matrimonial home. Accordingly, there will be a declaration that the husband holds the premises, as to one half the beneficial interest therein, in trust for the wife.

11. There was coercive evidence that the children are frightened of the husband, and a social worker gave evidence that they reacted badly to him. Accordingly, I propose to award custody of all the children to the wife.

12. The evidence in connection with the husband’s means was very vague. He is earning about £18 per week from his work as a barman and, as the unemployment benefit which he drew was £30.85, it is reasonable to

13. The husband’s behaviour has been so outrageous and has such a bad effect on the children that I propose to grant an injunction restraining him from entering the matrimonial home although he is the owner of a half share in it: see Gurasz v. Gurasz [1969] 3 W.L.R. 428 . There was no discussion about access and the husband made no request for this. If he wishes to have some provision for it, an application for this can be made later.