Ungrateful son and daughter-in-law evicted from mother's rented home

A court has given a couple and their three children two months in which to move out of a house belonging to the husband's mother, after establishing that they did not have a right to stay there.

The 70-year-old woman had filed a lawsuit against her son and his wife, explaining that after the elderly woman had separated from her husband, she had gone to live in a rented accommodation and had reluctantly allowed her son and his family to move in with her in 2007.

When the family moved in, she said, they had thrown away her furniture and replaced it to suit their tastes, whilst making her pay her share.

She said that she was eventually made to feel like a prisoner in her own home and would be forced to leave the house early and return late in the evening to accommodate her daughter-in-law's “obsessive cleaning”. The grandmother was made to suffer the indignity of having to knock on the door of her own home and to pay her son and his wife €200 in monthly rent – this equated to half her pension, when the actual rent for the property was €43.67 every three months.

The elderly lady had also told the court that she had recently discovered that utility bills in the name of her ex-husband to be €3,000 to be in arrears.

She had told the court that her account could be confirmed by social workers, as well as by her other son and his wife. She referred the court to a separate court case over allegations that her daughter-in-law had threatened her.

The young couple's lawyer Luciano Busuttil denied the allegations of abuse and cruelty that the elderly woman had made.

In her judgment on the case, Madame Justice Lorraine Schembri Orland remarked that the court was only able to decide the issue of eviction and was not empowered to tackle the allegations of mistreatment.

The court ordered the young couple to quit the premises within two months, whilst reserving the parties' rights to file further proceedings relating to the alleged abuse and to recover the costs incurred in furnishing and making improvements to the property.

Lawyer Lara Dimitriyevic assisted the grandmother.