DIVORCE LAWS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 224, 21 September 1934, Page 11

DIVORCE LAWS.

POSITION OF "WOMEN TO-DAY,

The opinion that, perhaps, now that women have insisted on equality with men in so many ways, they should recognise as gallantry on the part of men the fact that they do jiot insist on women's independence of them when divorced was expressed by Mr. CV A. L. Treadwell in an address on the economic position of women and children under the New Zea-land-divorce and maintenance laws to the Women's Service Guild in Wellington. ! Mr. Treadwell said that to understand the divorce laws it was necessary to realise the modern position of women. The law lagged behind for their benefit and did not take into full account their emancipation. The responsibilities of providing for innocent divorced women and children were not much different from what they were 30 years ago. Following a description of the change in women's domestic position since the middle ages and the effect of bringing women into industrial occupations that the iudustrial revolution had had, Mr. Treadwell remarked that the disparity in, remuneration between men and women of former times" had to some extent disappeared. Female labotir was not necessarily bad for a. country, for in it an asset of great value had been found which made it possible for all the work of a community to be done by means of a smaller number of families. Women's and Men's Rights. "You may think that the married woman, and to some extent the divorced woman, is the spoilt child of the law;" said Mr. Treadwell. "In 'Woman and Society, 1929,' Mr. Meyrick Booth sums up the position in these words 'Wife's Eights—the right of maintenance. The right to work outside the home, even against the wish of her husband. The right to determine the place of her residence. The right to invite her friends to her home and entertain them at her husband*s expense. The right to accept or refuse motherhood. The right to delegate the housework to servants, who must, of course be paid by the husband. The right of complete self possession. Husband's Rights.—None. , Sir E. Parry puts it in this way: 'Now that woman is legally on her own, it is both degrading to her status as well as unjust that she should maintain the legal privileges which were necessary to her in her chattel days.'" Stressing the ease with which marriages can be broken by means of failure to comply with an order for restitution of- conjugal rights, and also the more modern way of obtaining a' divorce, basing the application on the fact that the parties had agreed to separate / for three years, Mr. Treadwell suggested that divorces should be granted only after the parties had made a long and real attempt to live together. So far as maintenance was concerned, the court, in settling the amount, would always regard the wife's fortune and the husband's ability to pay as well as the conduct of the parties, and, while the court rarely gave an adulterous wife maintenance, it did so when the wife was quite unable to fend for herself; but the court sets its face against compelling a husband to continue "to support a wife who had committed adultery or wilfully broken her marriage contract. Effect of Easier Divorce. It was probably true that while in the great majority of divorce cases there were no children of the marriage, children were a compelling tie in married life, and the parents made a teal effort to live together. This was becoming less noticeable as divorce became easier. The court -w.ould dispose of the children according io their best interests, and at times the guilty party would be given the custody of the children. The Common Law gave the children to the father, but under New Zealand legislation the court has an unfettered discretion, as to which parent should have the custody of the children and the court regarded as of paramount importance the interests of the children concerned.. One of the tragedies of divorce was that if there were children they usually suffered to some degree economically as well as losing, the direction of. both parents: So far as providing for a divorced wife was concerned, it was interesting to note that if the husband chose later°to remarry, his doing so was no ground for reducing, the amount of maintenance the first wife was entitled to. In .Mr. Treadwell's opinion the modern tendency to make divorce easy was creating a real menace to society. Easy divorces spelt easy morals and the slackening of proper effort to make married life successful. National character suffered quicker from loose morals or easily broken marriages than probably from any other social cause.