ETHICS OF DIVORCE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 70, 23 March 1926, Page 9

ETHICS OF DIVORCE

"STARTLING CHANGES"

SIR ROBERT STOUT'S DECISION QUERIED.

. "This case presents, if the judgment of Sir Robert Stout is sound, an interesting commentary upon the startling charges which in recent years have taken place in New Zealand, not only in our legislation as to justifiable grounds for divorce, but also in the views the judiciary entertain with respect to that legislation if the decision of Sir Robert reflects it," said Sir John Findlay, in the Court of Appeal to-day, in an appeal against a decree nisi issued by Sir Eobert Stout as Chief Justice. The appeal was based on the ground that tlie separation on which the decree was based' was due to the adultery and wrongful acts of the petitioner. "Time was, in the history of our law, when both the legislature and the Courts were dominated by the ecclesiastical doctrine, still prevailing in some countries that, 'those whom God hath joined together; let no man put asunder,' so that until quite recent years the adultery of a/ husband af forded no sufficient ground for his wife's divorcing him. The decision of the late Chief Justice in this case (if sound) shows that we, in New Zealaud, have arrived at the amassing stage in our matrimonial legislation that when the long continued adulterous misconduct of the husband causes and results in a separation, that adulterous husband may invoke that separation as a ground for the divorce of an innocent wife—surely a strange commentary this, upon our belauded sanctity of marriage as the keystone of our Social structure. ' Stranger still is this case when it is disclosed that, according to Sir Robert Stout, a husband who has entered into a separation deed caused by his own adulterous conduct can, by changing his domicile, make that deed a'cround for divorce, when under the law of his then domicile, it was not, and is not, such a ground.'