Poland Tightens Divorce Laws

Press, Volume CI, Issue 30007, 17 December 1962, Page 7

Poland Tightens Divorce Laws

(N.ZJ>.A.-Beuter)

_ WARSAW. . Communist Poland is falling back on such "capitalistic devices as tough divorce laws and stiff alimony to check the steadily-increasing number of broken homes. A new marriage code, expected to be approved early in 1963 by the Polish Sejm stipulates J~“ a t a divorced man must nand over half of his income to his former wife. If the men are up in arms over these terms, so are the young gold-diggers who hope to trap a wealthy, middledivorced man. One Polish satirist remarked: The young thing who overlooks a bald head and protruding stomach for a big wallet will now think twice •bout marrying him She will be thinking If he gives half to his former wife, what remains for me? Just a protruding stomach,” Poland’s existing marriage code was framed in the first flush of socialist idealism in kte 1940's and reflects the ideological freedom of that era. a freedom which has been tarnished by the flame of social experience. Equality of Women The law-makers of those days wanted to give legal substance to the idea that women were independent and equal partners with men in the new society—emotionally and materially. Marriage was seen as a fre contract. Indeed, had not Engels, the master theoretician, himself said: “Only a marriage contracted out of love is moral, and only for as long as love lasts. Otherwise divorce is a benefit for the parties concerned and for society at large.” To post-war Communists, alimony was a capitalist idea Now, 12 years later, Poland's jurists have found that their fine theories did not work out in practice. Some teenagers used the liberal marriage arrangements to stay together as man and wife for only a week—or even one Hight One woman sociologist reported that out of 564 teenage marriages in one Polish city, only 95 lasted for more

than two years. More than 100 of the couples went their separate ways after “a day or days,” the report said, and the marriages of another 181 teen-agers survived only six months. Attitude of Wife Typical of the youngsters’ views on marriage was the comment of a husband, aged 19: "I regard an affair with another woman as no more serious than a cup of coffee . . . but my wife creates bourgeois rows about this." The new draft divorce lawaims at preserving family life and the matrimonial state with the full support of Government authority. It tacitly recognises that women are not the physical, or economic, equals of men by providing generous ali-mony-provided that the wife is not the guilty partner. To meet official concern over the increasing number of frivilous or cynical teenage marriages, the new law will raise the marriageable age for men from 18 to 21 years and for women from 16 to 18 years. Poland’s women have long been pressing for a tightening of the marriage laws. On the other hand, the bulk of the nation's males are sorry to see their post-w-ar freedom vanishing into thin air. “It is disgraceful, it is puritanical,” said one. “It is a retreat back to 19th century bourgeois ideas. Only the rich will be able to afford divorce—and who in Poland today is rich?”