CUSTODY OF CHILD

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26117, 20 May 1950, Page 7

CUSTODY OF CHILD

Irish Law Differs From . English PARENTS OF DIFFERING RELIGIONS <R “'- . LONDON, May 19. The difference between English and Irish law on the custody of children in cases of divorce was emphasised by the decision of the Eire Supreme Court, which by a majority of three to one rejected an appeal by a divorced woman, Mrs Dorothy Corcoran against the refusal of the Dublin High Court to enforce an order for the custody of her nine-year-old daughter granted to her in England. The evidence showed that the father was a Roman Catholic and the mother a Protestant, and that when they married the wife signed an undertaking that any children of the marriage would be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. When the couple were divorced, an English court—which found the husband the guilty party—granted Mrs Corcoran custody of the child. Corcoran, however, refused to obey this order and sent the girl to her grandmother in County Tipperary where she has been living for the last six and a half years. Corcoran was sent to prison at Winchester 15 months ago for failing to i obey the custody order and he is still I there. He had been asked several times whether he is prepared to comply with the order but he had persistently refused on the ground that if he handed the girl over to her mother, she would not be brought up as a Roman Catholic. When the Eire Supreme Court heard Mrs Corcoran’s appeal, Mr Justice Murnaghan, giving judgment, said that! English law on the custody of child-1 ren provided that the Court should.regard the welfare of the child as the first and paramount consideration. The J constitution of Eire, however, recog- [ nised the first and unalienable right of parents. In this case the child’s father had entrusted her to the care ofi her grandmother, so that the child could not be said to be held in unlaw- j ful custody. It was clearly impossible to harmonise the law of Ireland on this matter with the law of England, he said. Mr Justice Black, who dissented, said: “This blameless woman has suffered too much already. I can be no party to prolonging her ordeal for, years to come by cruel separation from her onlv child, and that at the instance of the individual who has ruined her life. I suspect the father’s ( 1 zeal for Roman Catholic religion. Such zeal, for all I know, may coexist with] intolerable cruelty.”