A v B

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Court: High Court
• Judge: Mr Justice Max Barrett
• Judgment Date: 29 October 2025
• Neutral Citation: [2025] IEHC 571
• Docket Number: [2025 No. 32 CAF]

A

Appellant

and

B

Respondent

[2025] IEHC 571

[2025 No. 32 CAF]

THE HIGH COURT

JUDGMENT of Mr Justice Max Barrett delivered on 29 ^th October 2025 .

Summary

In this judgment, I explain why Ms A's appeal against a revised order as to child maintenance and payment of s.47 report fees has failed.

1 . This is an appeal by the applicant against a revised order as to child maintenance and an order that she pay half of the fees outstanding on a s.47 report.

2 . The original maintenance order was made as part of a judicial separation granted by the Circuit Court on 6 ^th April 2022. Paragraph 8 of that order stated:

“ In respect of the dependent child P, maintenance is payable from the Respondent in the sum of €50 per week and an order backdating this sum for two years….An order capitalising P's maintenance, taking into account he will be dependent until November 2029 when he will be 23 years of age, therefore representing a period of 8 years and six months including the backdating period. €50 per week capitalised over this period totals a sum of €22,100 to be paid by the Respondent to the Applicant from the Respondent's proceeds from the sale of the [stated] property.”

3 . It appears from the evidence before me that there may perhaps have been a misunderstanding on the part of Ms A and/or her solicitor at the time of the judicial separation as to the purpose of the maintenance order made by the Circuit Court. Ms A has averred that, from the €22,100 lump maintenance ordered in April 2022, a sum of €17,863 was applied towards discharging her personal outstanding legal fees. Thus, she avers (mistakenly referring to herself as the Respondent):

“ I beg to refer to para.10 of the Applicant's Affidavit regarding the sum of €22,100 awarded for the maintenance for P which was handled by the Respondent['s] solicitor at the time of finalising the judicial separation in 2022. It was a condition of the Respondent's solicitor that her fees and counsel's fees would be taken from this money (€17,863). The balance was put away in the Respondent's credit union and subsequently used to pay the legal fees associated with the transfer of ownership of the family home (€2,872)…”.

4 . There is no indication in the Circuit Court order that legal costs were to be met from the maintenance award. On the contrary, no order for costs was made, with the result that each party was to bear their own legal fees. Anticipated legal costs should properly have been brought to the attention of the trial judge before the order was made. Had this occurred (and it is not clear to me that it did occur), the trial judge could have factored this imminent expense into her assessment of resources available for maintenance. Solicitors and counsel are entitled to be remunerated, but their fees should be billed separately from sums earmarked in a court order as being for child maintenance.

5 . Child maintenance, whether periodic or by way of lump sum, is meant to be spent on and for the child in question. While incidental overlap in household expenditure may be inevitable, the underlying principle is that such monies are for expenditure on and for the applicable child. For Ms A to have spent €17,863 on her own legal fees (in effect on herself) was to act in contravention of what the Circuit Court ordered. This may not have been fully appreciated at the time.

6 . I stress that I make no criticism of the former solicitors for Ms A. I have only her averment as to how the maintenance monies came to be expended on her legal fees, there are invariably at least two sides to every story, and here the solicitors have not been heard.

7 . It also appears that €2,872 from the original lump sum was expended on fees connected with the transfer of the family home to Ms A. Such expenditure may arguably be justified as directed towards securing accommodation for, inter alia, P – though again it would have been preferable for any such likely fees to be identified to the trial judge before she made her order in the judicial separation proceedings so that she could reduce her calculation as to available funds. What is not generally permissible – there may be and doubtless are cases in which a trial judge may need to order otherwise – is that a significant portion of a capitalised maintenance sum intended for long-term child maintenance should immediately be applied to a party's pre-existing legal costs.

8 . On 15 ^th June 2022, the parties were granted a divorce by...