Two heterosexual Irish men marry to avoid inheritance tax on property

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Two Irish men have married in Dublin to avoid paying €50,000 in inheritance tax on a house.

Best friends Matt Murphy and Michael O’Sullivan are both heterosexual, but decided to get married when they discovered how much tax would have to be paid on the house Murphy, 83, intended to leave in his will to O’Sullivan, 58, who is his carer.

Murphy could not afford to pay O’Sullivan as a carer. “Eventually Matt said the only way he could pay me was to leave me the house. He said he would give me the house so I have somewhere to live when he goes.”

However, O’Sullivan knew that would mean a huge tax bill and the house would have to be sold to pay it. He said Murphy “was chatting a friend down the country in Cashel, Co Tipperary, and she jokingly said we should get married.

“Then one night he turned around and said it to me and I said I would marry him.”

The couple got married in a former hospital on Dublin’s Grand Canal Street, followed by a meal for five at the nearby Gasworks bar.

During the wedding ceremony O’Sullivan spoke of his husband’s great kindness, the Irish Times reported, while Murphy sang Willie Nelson’s Let the World Go By: “With someone like you, a pal good and true / I’d like to leave it all behind and go and find / A place that’s known to God alone.”

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