A HUSBAND had his wife jailed last night for defying a court order to leave their North-East home.

The Darlington woman claimed she had nowhere to go after asking relatives and rejecting a "squalid" council flat.

Her husband applied to Teesside County Court to commit her to prison for seven days for breaching an injunction obtained on June 17, banning her from the family home, in Darlington.

She made a last-minute offer to the court to move out of the house after writing a list of clothes and documents she wanted to take with her.

The woman was also trying to make contact with her brother, living in West Cornforth, County Durham, to ask if she could stay with him in his already overcrowded conditions, said her barrister, Elaine Averis.

But Judge Tony Briggs granted the prison application made reluctantly by the husband, who is living with the couple's young son, in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Under the June injunction, the woman was banned from entering or approaching the house, or threatening or using violence towards her husband.

She made several applications to judges to extend her stay and should have been out of the family home by August 2, said her husband's solicitor, William Harrison.

The judge said: "This is a very unfortunate matter and an unusual one. It is conceded that the wife is still in the house and does not appear to have made any successful attempt to gain other accommodation.

"The basic problem is that the matter appears to be intractable, and what I am asked to - reluctantly - do is to enforce a committal to prison.

"No one likes doing this, and if sensible alternatives were available they could be used."

She was sentenced to seven days in jail, but the judge said that she would be released if the house handover went through to her husband's satisfaction.

* The Northern Echo has agreed not to name the couple to protect the identity of their child.