SEPARATION AFTER MARRIAGE

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 24

SEPARATION AFTER MARRIAGE

LEGALITY OF AGREEMENTS QUESTIONED [Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, December 18. The legality of agreements to separate between parties who -separated immediately after their marriage and had not lived together was questioned by Mr Justice Smith in two divorce cases that came before him in the Supreme Court here last month. He then expressed the opinion that it was against public policy for the parties to go through the form of marriage when neither ever really intended to live with the other. In judgments issued to-day His Honour granted decrees nisi to the petitioners in both the cases, in which he had reserved judgment. Referring to one case, His Honour said there was a genuine agreement made after the marriage for an immediate separation, not an agreement made before marriage for a future separation. The law did not frown upon the former, though it did upon the latter. In the other case His Honour said that, before the marriage, the parties had agreed that they would separate and not live together as man and wife. It appeared that in the street after the marriage the parties discussed the situation as married persons, and then separated. Since that separation they had met each other • several times, but had merely reiterated their agreement not to live together, and they had not in fact lived together since the marriage. “ I have come to the conclusion that I am justified on authority in inferring that the parties did in the street after marriage agree in their capacity as married persons to an immediate separation and that they acted upon that agreement immediately.”