DIVORCE LAWS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 205, 29 August 1936, Page 3 (Supplement)

DIVORCE LAWS.

reform needed.

RELIC OF BARBARiSM,

(By CHRISTINE COMBER.)

Broadminded men and women the ■world over have for some time past teen dissatisfied with the prevailing divorce laws, which they denounce as clumsy, inadequate and humiliating. If after marriage a woman finds life intolerable with the partner she h as chosen she may, of course, leave him. But if she should grow to love another man, it is then that the cruelty of the present system is made clear to her. The mere fact that she hates the man to whom she is legally tied and adores one for whom conventional society considers that she in her married state should never have spared a thought counts as nothing in the eyes of the law. So long as she cannot bring any of the requisite charges against her husband she cannot hope for happiness with the man she now loves. Her one hope then is that if she is "unfaithful" in the legal sense, her husband's pride will cause him to divorce her. Thus she is enforced to endure this humiliation as a punishment for having made the. most elementary of all mistakes —an error in judgment. Leading Sydney feminists have for a considerable time been agitating for drastic alterations in Australian divorce laws, one of the main clauses being that, judicial separation should not be granted where grounds for divorce exist. That desertion is also a ground foi divorce is of no help to the deserting party if the other will not take action. An attempt to cope with the peiplexing and to many minds alarming P r °" blem is being made in Adelaide, with the appointment of Australia's first marriage conciliator, Brigadier General Weir. He will, by discussions with unhappily-mar-ried couples, attempt to bring about a reconciliation. ICo legal atmosphere will attend his efforts, which are being observed with the greatest possible interest all over the Commonwealth. Undoubtedly public opinion has changed since the war regarding the whole subject of divorce. It is no longer taboo as a conversational topic in

respectable households, nor do divorced persons become social pariahs. Therefore it follows that it does not now require the same courage to petition for divorce as it did in the days of the Victorian regime. Then women endured untold misery, insult and mental and moral cruelty rather than brand themselves as "shameless hussies" who were not content with the state into which they had entered with the blessing of God's holy ordinance. Apparently no one realises that such a sacrifice was in itself an offence against domestic decency. The increasing numbers of petitions prove that divorce is the only possible solution for complete matrimonial misfits. Warning to Marrieds. ' On the other hand Lord Merivale, who was president of the Divorce Court for 14 years, according to a report in one of the Sydney papers, has published a book, "Marriage and Divorce," in which he takes a stern view of the situation. He "gives a warning," says the Press report, "against tampering with the institution of marriage, and proposes that increased powers should be given to the Courts to deter unscrupulous persons from making arrangements for divorce, and to deal strictly with wrongdoers." His idea of dealing with wrongdoers appears to 'be to deprive them of some of their rights of citizenship. "Why should a man who breaks up the home of another man escape the proper consequences of criminous conduct?" he asks. He apparently does not realise that when a man falls in love with another man's wife and finds his regard reciprocated, neither the man nor the woman are of necessity "criminals," but two wretched humans"desperately trying to rectifythe earlier blunder of one, and so achieve happiness for both. Naturally Lord Merivale's views have been strongly criticised. A woman barrister points out that if the rights of citizenship are to be made dependent on immaculate moral behaviour, the compilers of electoral rolls will be. faced with an alarming task. In New Zealand the public has not been unmindful of the need for reform in divorce proceedings. It is, however, a subject which many people ignore until it becomes a matter of vital importance to themselves or their friends. Yet New Zealand has been to the fore so often with social reforms that it can be expected with confidence that it will not lag behind in a matter of such vital importance to the entire civilised world.