MATCHMAKING IN LAW

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 2 May 1925, Page 15

MATCHMAKING IN LAW

PEES NOT RECOVERABLE.

The law of England has always been hostile to the professional matchmaker, writes a barrister in the London "DailyTelegraph." Marriage, according to a learned Judge, ought to be procured by the mediation of friends and not of hirelings. It is most true, observed another, that equity does abhor all underhand agreements in cases of marriage. A man who desires to marry may feel an urgent need of the advice and services of some skilled intermediary. Introductions are necessary; possibly receptions and entertainments. He himself may be a fool in such matters. In ancient Rome there were expert' matchmakers who were recognised and whose fees were regulated by law. In England the seeker after matrimony may meet a helpful person and agree to give him a reward for his services; but the law will not enforce payment of it, and will even assist an ungrateful client by enforcing repayment of such fees and expenses as have already been paid for services rendered. In one case a woman agreed with the editor of a matrimonial paper to pay him £250 for introductions to eligible men if she should marry one of them, and she paid a deposit, part of which was returnable if the marriage did not take place. She got the introductions without success, and the Court of Appeal held that she was entitled ■ to recover the whole of the deposit. The Court would have done likewise, as it did in another case, even if the introductions had led to marriage. On the other hand, the law of this country is equally against any contract or disposition in general restraint of marriage. If John induces Mary to marry him by the promise of wealth—not untold, but specific, say £1000—that is a good contract which Mary can enforce when she has fulfilled her part of the bargain. But if John should enter into an agreement, even a sealed agreement, to this effect: I will marry nobody but Mary j and if I marry anyone else I will pay Mary £1000, that is an agreement utterly against the law and the public policy of England. The Judges in such a case pointed out that it was not a promise to marry Mary, but a promise not to marry anyone else; so that if she refused or jilted him he was doomed to remain a bachelor for life. It was a contract in general restraint of marriage. A great Lord Chief Justice declared of such contracts that they encouraged licentiousness and tended to depopulation.Particular restraints and restraints on second marriages can be imposed. A rich Lancashire man died leaving large estates to his daughter, on condition thai she should forfeit them if she married a Scotsman. She married a Scot and lost the estates. The English Judges assumed that there were in the world plcntv of good marriageable men who were nol Scotsmen.