Munster and Leinster Bank Ltd v O'Connor

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 04 April 1937
• Date: 04 April 1937
• Court: High Court (Irish Free State)

Munster and Leinster Bank, Ltd. v. O'Connor

MUNSTER AND LEINSTER BANK, LIMITED

Plaintiffs

and

MONICA C. O'CONNOR AND OTHERS

Defendants.

Domicil - Person domiciled in Irish Free State subsequently residing abroad - Whether presumption of domicil of choice rebutted by evidence of continuance of domicil of origin - Sufficiency of evidence - Periodic visits regularly paid to Irish Free State during residence abroad - Residential rooms always retained in Irish Free State.

Summary Summons.

This summons was brought to determine whether Annie O'Connor, who was born in Cork and who died at 10 Rue de Florence, Paris, on the 29th March, 1934, was at the date of her death domiciled in the Irish Free State or in France.

Her brother, Aloysius O'Connor, made an affidavit in which he stated that he, his brother William P. O'Connor, and his two sisters. Monica and Ellen O'Connor, were the sole next of kin, and that the said William P. O'Connor was the heir at law. The further facts (as stated in this affidavit) have been summarised in the headnote and are set out in the judgment of Meredith J.

An affidavit by J. S. Mooney, solicitor, Cork, stated that Annie O'Connor had informed him about the year 1932 that she had never become a French citizen, she was proud to be Irish, and would never think of changing her nationality, even though she had to register as an alien and report at intervals to the French authorities.

The case had previously come before Johnston J., when it was stated that the value of Annie O'Connor's assets in the Irish Free State was about £14,000, and the value of her assets in France was about £400 or £500. The question of the liability of these assets to duty either in the Irish Free State or in France arose, and Johnston J. had adjourned the case to enable the French Government to be informed of the case. This had been done.

O'C. was born in Cork in 1858, where her father resided and carried on business. She was brought up and received her primary education in Cork, subsequently going to England and then to Nice to complete her education. She remained in Nice for two years, after which she returned to her father's home in Cork where she remained for the next two or three years. She then took up a position as a governess in Spain where she remained until about the year 1888 or 1889, when she again returned to her father's home in Cork, where she stayed for the next three or four years. She then went to Paris and obtained an appointment as bookkeeper in a business establishment. Some time later she opened in Paris a business of her own which she carried on until her death in March, 1934, having been resident in Paris for forty years. Her...