Civil fraud in sale of home by siblings

Two siblings committed a civil fraud in selling their late father’s Dublin home, on foot of a death certificate for a woman with the same name as their stepmother, the Court of Appeal has ruled. The stepmother was alive at the time.

The stepmother, Maureen Moore, had married John G Moore, a widower, in 1971, and they had bought a house at Mount Tallant Avenue, Dublin, in their joint names in 1975.

Ms Moore left there in 1983, due to her husband’s allegedly violent behaviour. Her solicitor wrote to her husband four months later, in connection with her interest in the property, but got no reply.