THE MORE dramatic elements of the high-profile Heather Mills-Paul McCartney divorce ruling provided plenty of sensational frontpage headlines last week, but the legal implications for Irish divorces went under the radar.
Although there are a number of differences between the divorce systems in the UK and the Republic, court decisions in the UK have "persuasive authority" in this jurisdiction, according to leading family law solicitor Geoffrey Shannon.
One of the key principles to emerge from the Mills-McCartney ruling is that, in the case of a short marriage (Mills and McCartney were married for just four years), if the assets were accumulated before the marriage, the wife (or husband as the case may be) will not be entitled to a 50-50 split of their spouse's assets.
Although Mills claimed that she had contributed significantly to McCartney's career during their marriage, Mr Justice Hugh Bennett dismissed this claim, and she was awarded £24.3 million (€31.2 million), a significant sum but a fraction of the former Beatle's total fortune.
This is in contrast to another landmark UK divorce case, where the wife of a multimillionaire fund manager was awarded roughly half of the wealth generated by her husband during their marriage, even though they were married for less than three years.
Shannon says both of these cases are of particular interest from an Irish perspective and "may very well be followed in Ireland because one of the factors an Irish court can take into account is the length of the marriage", he says.
While the fund manager case may have struck fear into the hearts of wealthy Irish businesspeople planning to divorce their spouse after a brief marriage, those who amassed their fortune before tying the knot may take some comfort from the McCartney ruling.
Hilary Coveney, partner at Matheson Ormsby Prentice solicitors, says that while British rulings are not automatically followed in the Republic, such cases are always watched with interest because of the similarities between the two jurisdictions.
"In Ireland so far we haven't had a case like the Mills-McCartney [ case], in other words involving very significant assets and a very short marriage, so if similar facts were to appear, almost certainly we would look at how the English court reached its decision and almost certainly that would be referred to in an Irish case," she says.
