ABSENTEE DIVORCES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 149, 21 December 1945, Page 9

ABSENTEE DIVORCES

AMERICAN PROCEDURE

P.A. AUCKLAND, This Day. The manner in which the New Zealand wife of an American serviceman may find herself divorced under United States law without adequate opportunity of being represented at the hearing in America, is illustrated by a case reported by a member of an Auckland legal firm. It was stated that in this particular instance, since funds were available to enable counsel to be briefed subsequently in the United States, .it had been found possible to have the decision set aside, but the Auckland solicitor concerned said that in more usual circumstances a woman could well find herself divorced without alimony and without the means of taking suitable action. Ten days after a visiting United 'States officer and a New Zealand girl were married the groom was posted away from New Zealand. The solicitor said the bride, expecting to, join her husband in America, had sent certain of her personal belongings in advance but subsequently coolness .was apparent in the husband's letters and finally he said the only course was to move for | a divorce.

"I communicated with him asking that his attorney should get in touch with me so that the terms of the proposed divorce could be discussed," the solicitor added. "I got no reply, but my client was served with a petition for divorce on the grounds of gross neglect of duty. This document was sent to my client from America by ordinary mail. It was issued on September 20 and arrived in New Zealand late in October or early in November, the case being set down for hearing on November 6." Insufficient time remained to enable the wife to be represented at the hearing, he said. He cabled, only to find that a divorce had been granted; and the wife received formal notice, this time by air mail. "It was really a case of divorce proceedings being issued with no real prospect of having the wife represented, and a divorce being granted," the solicitor concluded. "In New Zealand courts, one has to give adequate time for respondent to plead." The solicitor added that consent to the publication in New Zealand of the circumstances had been given by the wife's father in case it might assist any other New Zealand girls m a like predicament.