QUESTIONS OF LAW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 275, 21 November 1933, Page 10

QUESTIONS OF LAW.

UNFAIR TO WOMEN,

A number of anomalies in the laws as they affect women were pointed out by a woman solicitor in Melbourne recently.

"The woman's point of view certainly needs a champion," she said. "Often the maintenance allowed a wife is so little that a man finds it costs more to run his car than to support his wife and child. With the way the Courts are influenced at present, men who desert their wives find tliey are better off financially than before. "Women cannot afford to take a backward step, and be set aside in the hearing of maintenance cases. "It is extraordinary, too," she added, "that in Australia, where we have had the vote for so long, women are . not yet allowed to sit on the jury, although in Englarid—where they have had the vote for only ten years—they are. Mainly Inadvertence. "Although most of the disqualifications under which women formerly suffered under the law werfe practically wiped out with the Women's Qualification Act, a few still remain, mainly, I think, through inadvertence. All the same, there are positions open to women, especially professional women, to which, however capable they are, they are never appointed. "A curious law is that forbidding women to bet with bookmakers. Although they have done it for years, generally through a third person, quite openly, they are never prosecuted. And why stop women betting with bookmakers, yet let them bet on the totalisator?" she asked. "One anomaly," she said, "always irritates me—the registration of births in regard to the legitimating of the illegitimate child. The law provides that where the parties are married after the birth of the child, and. wish to legitimise it, the wife cannot do it, but only the husband. "That should be all right, but there are husbands who use this privilege as a threat, or actually refuse to legitimise the child. "It is an unshaken belief that the marriage of the parents legitimises a child, but it does not. Th 4 child must bo registered after the marriage. The only time a wife can legitimise her child is when the hxisband is dead, and she must register the child within two years of her husband's death. Divorce and Domicile. "An outstanding anomaly in our Marriage Acts is the wife having to take the domicile of her husband. "If a husband deserts his wife, to live in another State, she also must live in that State to divorce him. But a husband living in Timbuctoo can divorce a wife in Australia, although she is not in Timbuctoo to defend herself. "The custody of the child is another legal point that often leads to seeming injustice. In most cases the judge finds it in the interest of the child's future to give the custody to the father, although the wife is in the right. The father generally has the material advantages that are supposed to be worth more to a child than a mother's love. It is argued that if a child is .separated from its father he may lose interest in it and refuse to help it later in life. "A tremendous number of anomalies occur through the wife having to take the husband's nationality, as she thereby becomes, or might become, subject to laws that she would never have heard of, or never have realised she was subject to. It is a very serious matter in Australia with our prohibited immigration laws. It is not unlikely that an Australian woman married to a foreigner would be refused admission here. In the event of war, many Australian women would be in a very unfortunate position. Marriage to Americans. "An Australian woman who marries an American is particularly unfortunate. She is an American, according to Australian law,, but she must live in America for twelve months before she can become an American in that country. Under their immigration laws, however, she is only allowed to go to America for six months, and so cannot qualify as a national. She is therefore a woman without a country.

"Leo Krantz, the Adelaide girl,, who married 'Spivakovsky, the musician, is ; in an extraordinary position,- because of her nationality. Her husband is a Russian, but she would have to live for two years in the Soviet to become a Russian, so Spivakovsky became naturalised as a German, and she took that nationality. Then came Hitler; the Nazis raided their flat in Berlin, and they were forced to leave Germany. Now, to simplify matters, and save themselves endless trouble with passports, they travel as Mr. Spivakovsky and Miss Trantz.

"Women's organisations have no juster or stronger clnim to any reform than they have in their campaign to permit married women to retain their nationality."