THE RUSH FOR DIVORCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 61, 9 September 1905, Page 5

THE RUSH FOR DIVORCE.

AMENDMENT IN A BILL. THE "CONJUGAL RIGHTS" GAME. There is likely to be some trouble over the Divorce Act Amendment Bill when ib comes back to the House from the Council. The Bill was introduced for tho purpose of making lunacy a ground foi divorce. Several important amendments have been suggested by the Statutes Revision Committee (some of which wjb recorded yesterday) the most important being a new clause which will have the practical effect of removing what has been stated by members of the legal profe&sion to be one of the most vital of tho causes for the increasing number of divorce decrees. As the Act stands at present five years' desertion is a ground for divorce, but there is another special form of desertion. When a man or woman disobeys a, decree for the restitution of conjugal rights, the petitioning wife or husband is deemed to have been deserted, and in ithis especial case divorce proceedings may be instituted, forthwith, without the five years' waiting. The Statutes Revision Committee proposes to so amend j j the existing Act as to wipe this provision out and to make disobedience of a decree for the restitution of conjugal rightcount as desertion pure and simple. * This matter was dealt with by the Post some time ago, and it, was discovered, from enquiries amongst the local legal profession, that the proceedings for the restitution of conjugal rights were used merely as a step to swift and easy divorce, the withdrawal of conjugal .rig"hts, the suit for their restitution, and the disobedience of the decree for restitution, being matters of friendly arrangement between husband and wife. This, of course, is collusion, but it is practically impossible to prove collusion. A local lawyer informed* a Post representative that the. Committee's new clause, if agreed to, will remove a notable facility for slipping the matrimonial moorings. One result, he says, wSI be a decrease in the number of suits for restitution of conjugal rights. A<i far as he knew there was no penalty for disobedience- of a decree for restitution, so that as there is no redress for a genuine withdrawal of conjugal rights, and no necessity for a bogus suit for restitution, these suits will practically disappear.