DIVORCE LAW

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 22

DIVORCE LAW

Plea for Extension GROUNDS FOR RELIEF Sir Reginald Poole, of London, in his presidential address to the Law Society at its provincial meeting at Oxford, gave it as his conclusion that the right of the Divorce Court to dissolve a marriage should be extended. "I am not in favour of granting divorces to the spouses of convicts or lunatics,” he said, “but I am in favour of extending the law so as to enable our judges to relieve a spouse from the burden of life with another at whose hands he or she has suffered ‘persistent and aggravated cruelty,’ “For one isolated act of infidelity by the other, a man or woman can obtain a divorce enabling either of them to obtain the custody of the children, and to get a settlement of money to be secured upon them for life. It matters not how utterly repentant the defaulter may be—the wronged party may obtain this relief in consequence of the wrongdoing. “Now look at another picture,” he said. “A man may beat his wife, abuse her before his children and the servants, render her life—to use a familiar phrase—‘hell on earth,’ and yet she can obtain only a judicial separation from him. “This does not enable her to remarry, and only permits of her obtaining during joint lives an unsecured periodical payment of money, so that if her husband dies a week after the decree, she and her children may find themselves penniless. “When, as in so many cases, the husband does everything to torture a wife, short of actual physical violence, she cannot even obtain a judicial separation unless She can prove by medical testimony that his conduct has injured or tended to injure her health. “There are many cases,” said Sir Reginald, “where the woman can and does make life unendurable for her husband. “There is the ease of a drunken woman who neglects her home duties and her children; the jealous woman who suspects her husband’s every move—in short, there are cases where the blame rests entirely upon the wife, and in which the husband ought to be placed in the position of being able to get the marriage tie dissolved. “I have sufficient faith in our judges,” he said, “to allow them to settle a definition of ‘persistent and aggravated cruelty.’ “I am also of'the opinion that, as in Scotland, a decree of divorce should be granted for fours years’ ‘wilful desertion.’ ”