A man who believes he was born in a mother and baby home [1] has been awarded €225,000 out of the estate of his birth mother, who did not raise him.
In a judgment, Ms Justice Siobhán Stack ruled that the plaintiff had demonstrated, as required by section 117 of the Succession Act, that his mother had failed in her moral duty to make proper provision to him in her will.
The plaintiff’s mother was unmarried when she gave birth to him in a “very different Ireland” in the 1950s, while his father died shortly before his birth.
The man was loved and cared for by the family who raised him, the judge noted. There had been no formal adoption process and the plaintiff was “significantly distressed” by the defendant’s insistence that he supply DNA evidence of his relationship to the deceased, which he did.
Ms Justice Stack accepted his evidence that it was well known in the deceased’s family that he was the woman’s son.
She ruled that the woman ought to have provided for the plaintiff in her will and awarded him a lump sum of €225,000.