APPEAL QUESTION

Evening Star, Issue 22596, 13 March 1937, Page 13

APPEAL QUESTION

MAINTENANCE LIABILITY' (.Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, March 12. The Court of Appeal is engaged hearing the appeal of Charles Whitworth Hole versus Ottoline Valerie Hole. The parties were at one time husband and wife, but on the wife’s petition, based on an oral agreement for separation, they were divorced in 1934. At the time of the separation the appellant agreed to pay £5 a week for the maintenance of the respondent and their infant daughter, and the payments were made under this arrangement. The maintenance fell into arrears, and in July, 1934 ? on an application for permanent maintenance, £3 weekly was ordered to be paid to the respondent. This order was expressed to be without prejudice as to any rights which the respondent might have as to past maintenance. In February, 1936, the respondent commenced proceedings, claiming £520, representing the difference between the amount of maintenance paid under the maintenance order and that which she claimed should have been paid under the agreement. Mr Justice Blair allowed the respondent’s claim, holding that the divorce and maintenance proceedings did not in any way affect the contract between the parties except that the maintenance order must lie taken as in pro tanto discharge of the agreement. Hie appellant now seeks to reverse this judgment. Addressing the court on behalf of the appellant, Mr Perry submitted that authorities showed that an agreement for separation would terminate on the death of either party or on the resumption of married life. He contended further that the agreement would terminate when the parties became divorced, as they did in this case. Ho further submitted that every separation agreement which did not contain provisions for a settlement on the wife was put an end to if either party petitioned for and obtained a divorce. Mr Leicester, for the respondent, submitted that there had been an agreement to pay the respondent £5 a week, that this allowance was to bo permanent, and that proceedings for maintenance did not debar her from proceeding under the agreement. The hearing was adjourned.