DIVORCE LAWS

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 112, 8 November 1920, Page 9

DIVORCE LAWS

SOME AMENDMENTS PASSED BY PARLIAMENT

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Amendment Bill came before the House of Representatives on Saturday afternoon for its second reading. In moving the second reading the Minister for Justice (the Hon. E. P. Lee) said the Bill, which originated in the Legislative Council, ir.ade failure to comply with a decree for restitution s of conjugal rights a ground for divorce, and allowed the Court to make a decree for dissolution of marriage when the parties had been separated for not lees than three years. The Minister also introduced; by Supplementary Order Paper, new clauses providing that divorce might be obtained: On the ground that the respondent had been convicted of, and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for attempting to'murder, or doing bodily harm to the petitioner' or any, child of the petitioner or respondent; on the ground, also, "That the respondent a person of unsound mind and is unlikely to recover, and has beea confined as such in New Zealand in an institution within the meaning of the Mental' Defectives Act, 1911, or in a like institution in any, other country of the British dominions for a period or periods not less ir> the aggregate than seven years within the period of ten years immediately preceding the filing of the petition." Another provision introduced set out the following additional grounds: "That the respondent is a person of unsound mind and is unlikely to recover, and has been continuously a person of unsound mind for the period of seven years immediately preceding the filing of the petition, and, during the final three years of the said period of seven years, has beea confined as such in New Zealand in r.n institution within the meaning of the ..Mental Defectives Act, 1911, or in a like institution in any other country of the British dominions." ' . . Mr. T. M. Wilford (Leader of the Opposition) said he would support' the right to present a petition for divorce after parties had been separated for three years. . He also dealt with other provisions in the Bill, which lie mainly approved. , The Bill was read a second time, went through Committee without amendment, and was then read a third time and passed. '