DIVORCE PETITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 155, 4 July 1938, Page 10

DIVORCE PETITION.

■ — —•- HUSBAND'S ACTION.

DEFENCE BY WIFE. STORY OF MARRIED LIFE. A petition in the Supreme Court today, before Mr. Justice Callan, in which Arthur Wiggins, of Grey Lynn (Mr. Gallagher), nought a divorce from his wife. Edna France* Higgiiw (Mr. C. E. Clarke i, was defended. The petition uds based on a verbal agreement of M'paratioii. but respondent denied such agreement, and said that if there were

any -uch agreement it war due to the wrongful actr, or conduct of the petitione:". Constant Bickerings. Arthur Higgins, the petitioner, stated that he wa.- married to respondent on December 2S, 1922, at the registrar's office, Hamilton, and there was one child of the marriage, born in March, l'.'iU. It was two or three weeks after he had arranged for furnished l'oom.s to live in at Grey Lynn that his wife came to live with him there. They were not happy in their married life, the result of bickerings because the wife insisted on going out three or four nights a we.-k unaccompanied by him. At time* she threw crockery «t him. This continued until li>24, when a separation agreement was drawn up.

The wife refused to sign the separation agreement and *he went to New IMymoiith to stay with her mother an<l lie i>aitl her 30/ per week. Prior to that he had been paying her JC4 per week out of his wager of £•"> to keep the hfHise «nd herself. At his reijuest the wife returned to him an<l they lived in lodgings together. After tlie child was horn, in 192t>. the wife again started going nut at nights an<l he was left to look after the child. Leading Up to Separation.

Petitioner stated that in 1927 he got a hou*e in Grey Lynn, where they lived until 19.' U. Differences between them again arose because of the wife's persistence in going out in the afternoon and not coining back home till midnight, while he had to look after the child. When he asked where she went he was told to mind his own business. He related several incidents, including an occasion when the wife threw a tomahawk at him. They had broken off marital relations soon after the child was born. Later, about 1931, he had trouble with her about non-payment of the household accounts, and when he withheld part of her allowance until thc accounts were squared she threw a kettle of hot water at him. The wife took action for separation, but the case was adjourned sine die, and at a meeting between the lawyers they agreed to separate, the -vife to have £3 10/ a week and the child and some of the furniture. He kept up the payments for some weeks until he was billed by tradesmen for accounts contracted by the wife in his name, and he then stopped 20/ a' week to pay off the accounts, making this later 10/ a week. Saturday Wight at Home. It was his custom, said witness, to drink beer at home on Saturday night with some friends. This was usually during his wife's absence, and had been his custom throughout his married life. The witness stated that in 1935 he started divorce proceedings, but dropped them at the request of a woman friend.

Cross-examined by Mr. Clarke, the witness said that the amount of the beer in the house on Saturday nights was "an American gallon" in a jar. and usually there were two other men there. The custom did not start until his wife had started going out and leaving him alone.

The Wife's Side Of It. The witness denied that he threatened to murder his wife on the occasion of the kettle of hot water, or that he had threatened her at other times with a lead pipe. He denied ever having ordered the wife out of the house, or having ever struck her. He also denied that he declined to take the wife out in a car he had, saying that it was for his other women friends. He didn't have women friends.

Mr. Clarke stated that the defence was that the facts of the case showed that there was no agreement by the wife to the separation, and that they also showed constructive desertion on the husband's part.

Respondent said that her husband frequently flew into rages over trivial things, and the unhappine/s resulting from this affected her health. Her husband also frequently left her very much alone. He said he wanted her to leave him, as he had someone else he wished to marry. He threatened her on several occasions. During the later years he made her life miserable, and frequently humiliated her before others.

Only once in four years did her husband take her out. He had threatened , her with a length of lead pipe, .and also with knives and axes. She was consequently terrified, and in a nervous condition. There was nothing she would have liked better than to leave him, but she feared she would get nothing to keep herself and her daughter. The case is proceeding.