A woman who was assaulted by her former spouse claims she cannot sell her family home because a solicitor's firm that had previously acted for them is refusing to give her the deeds to the property.
The woman claims her former lawyers have no right or entitlement to retain the documents.
The High Court also heard her husband is currently serving a prison sentence for committing violent acts against her, including assaulting and threatening to kill her. He is due to be released next year.
To comply with court orders made in respect of their divorce proceedings, she must sell their family home, worth an estimated €1.5 million, where they had resided for many years.
Now represented by another solicitor, she claims that she has been asking her former solicitor's firm to provide her with certain legal documents including the deeds of the property for over a year.
The former solicitor has refused to do so.
The court heard that the solicitors' firm in question has claimed in an email sent in recent days that it is owed €10,000 for a sale of the property that did not proceed.
The woman denies that she owes any money to her former solicitor's firm.
She has brought proceedings against her former solicitor where she seeks an order from the High Court directing the respondent firm to furnish her with the original title deeds of the property, and the file arsing out a contract of retainer entered into between the parties.
Represented by Gabriel Gavigan SC and David Geoghegan Bl the woman asked the court for permission to have the application, which was due to go before the courts in October, brought forward to a date in July.
The court heard that the respondent solicitor's firm had acted for her former husband during their divorce proceedings.
The woman said that the same solicitor's firm had later represented her in another matter.
The woman now accepts that the respondent firms' representation of her in this matter was odd and clearly inappropriate given it had acted for her former husband during their divorce proceedings.
She said she was instructed by one solicitor in the firm, while her husband had been represented by a different solicitor in that firm.
She claims that in the course of representing her, the respondent firm, which she alleges was on a retainer, generated a solicitor's file and also retained the original title deeds to the property.
She claims the deeds and the file are her property, and that no outstanding money or charge is owed by her to the respondent solicitor.
The woman claims that over the last 14 months her current solicitor has made multiple requests to the respondent solicitor to furnish the file and the deeds to her. However, the respondent has failed to do so.
At one stage, she claims the former firm asked her for a payment of €1,500, which she said she did not owe, but was prepared to pay to get possession of the documents.
She claims that her former solicitor has no rightful authority to retain the documents, and the failure to hand them over to her current solicitor is preventing the sale of the property.
She says that she wants to sell the property so that she can fully comply with the orders made in respect of her divorce proceedings, and because she does not want to have any further dealing with her former husband when he is released from prison.
The matter came before Mr Justice Mark Sanfey granted the applicant permission on an ex-parte basis to have the matter listed before the courts later this month.
