BRITISH DIVORCE LAW

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 225, 11 June 1923, Page 7

BRITISH DIVORCE LAW

EQUALITY OF THE SEXES WIFE TO OBTAIN DECREE FOR INFIDELITY London, June 8. The House of Commons debated the report from a committee on Major C. F. Entwistle’s Matrimonial Causes Bill, which makes the sexes equal in relation to divorce and enables a wife to obtain a decree for a husband’s adultery alone, instead of having, as now, to prove desertion or cruelty in addition to misconduct. Major R. AV. Barrett (C.) proposed a new clause to provide that a husband should not be deprived of the custody of his children solely because he i# guilty of a single act of misconduct. Dr. AV. A. Chapple (L.), in opposing this, said not one woman in a hundred would seek a divorce if she were going to lose her children, notwithstanding that it was her husband’s infidelity that caused the proceedings. Mr. J. P. F. Rawlinson t'C.) thought easy divorce would be a curse to the country. He suggested that the Bill would produce thousands of collusive divorces, the husbands willingly supplying evidence. The new clause was defeated by to 25, but Major Entwistle accepted an amendment providing that a husband could not be divorced for misconduct committed prior to' the passage of th© Bill. The debate was closed, and the Bill was then read a third time by 257 votes to 76. —Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.