A Co Offaly woman told a judge yesterday she was roused from her sleep at four in the morning and told to get herself to Dublin for her son's wedding in a registry office.
"There was no church service, just a shotgun wedding," Mrs Sheila Fanning told Judge Elizabeth Dunne in the Dublin Circuit Civil Court.
Mrs Fanning, and her husband Arnold, who owns the Midland Tribune Printing Group, succeeded in an application against their daughter-in-law, Ms Cynthia Fanning, for possession of a €250,000 apartment in the Smithfield Village area of Dublin.
Mr Arnold Fanning, Wilmer Road, Birr, said he and his wife bought two apartments in Dublin in 1998 as a Section 23 tax-saving financial investment. After his son James's business failed he allowed him and Cynthia to live in the one in Smithfield.
While title to the apartment had never been registered in his, Arnold, and his wife, Sheila's, names, due to an accepted oversight by their solicitors, the apartment had never been bought for nor was intended to be registered to James and Cynthia.
He said his son had been married in 1998 but it had broken up in 1999 shortly after the birth of their son, Jack.
He told the court Cynthia had been living in the apartment since the marriage break-up and he wanted her out in order to rent it. He and his wife Sheila had been paying the mortgage and other expenses on the apartment with no financial return but he would not insist on his daughter-in-law and grandson being put on the street. He was prepared to allow Cynthia time to arrange alternative accommodation.
Mrs Sheila Fanning said she had no word of James getting married until the early hours of the wedding morning. She and her husband allowed the couple the use of the apartment.
Mr James Fanning said after Cynthia had become pregnant they moved in together to rented accommodation. He had asked his parents to be allowed to use the Smithfield apartment until they got on their feet.
Ms Cynthia Fanning, The Hardwicke, Morning Star Avenue, Dublin, said she believed James was purchasing the apartment with the help of his mother.