The Husband Pays

Franklin Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 43, 19 April 1940, Page 3

The Husband Pays

thicker than his thumb is, and he nay confine her but not imprison her.” But modern practice has ousted the old laws. The 20th century husband can do none of these things. He cannot even make his wife life with him if she does not want to, not even if he has obtained an order for the restitution of conjugal rights. It is rather inconsistent that although a husband is bound to support his wife during his life, lie no longer has to make any provision for her in his will if he does not want to. But if. the husband dies first, and there is no will, the wife has certain rights. She can take £IOOO and a life interest on her husband’s property, or (if there are children) in half of it and all hie “chattels.” Chattels are movable objects not used for business or trade, such as motor-cars, jewellery, garden effects, domestic animals, plate, linen, china, glass, books, and pictures. If both husband and wife die together in an accident, it is presumed that the older of them died before the younger, and their property is divided | between their relatives on that basis.

►< WIFE’S PRIVILEGES IN LAW \ *\ ONE PEHSON OH TWO ’ \ f “Marriage." wi'ole the great Sir William Blackstone. when in the ►4 middle of the J Bth century lie sum- ► ' ►J met! up 700 years of English Jaw, & “makes husband and wife one in law. \ The very being and existence of the b . ~ wile is suspended during marriage. j Ever since then we have been giv- ! ing the wife (and husband) bits of Si “llieir being and existence'’ back. But you can't undo 700 years of lawmaking in two centuries. ►< So there is plenty of the “one in law" principle still left to conflict with all the laws, we have 'passed to separale their identities for the last 200 i? years. r * That makes the present law of & husband and wife the most complex \ and illogical slate of things you can imagine. You cannot say if the hus- ►< band and wife are one person or two Ji in law today. ►< The answer is that in certain cases about which no laws have been passed y ►< since Blackstone they are still one. About 80 years ago it became prac£l iicable to dissolve a marriage. Before jj! that there had been about three divorces every two years; there are ►J 8000 now. Considering that a special & Act of Parliament was needed for r i Si eacli divorce, it is not really surprisf: ing. Next, about 50 years ago, married women acquired the right to have $1 their own property. Before that their property vested automatically in the husband.

Then, five years ago, a law was passed which conferred so much individuality on the wife that tier acts were to be considered her own responsibility and not her husband’s. So, if a wife writes a poison pen letter about her neighbour, or keeps him awake all night with the wireless, or breaks down somebody’s fences and trespasses on his property, or breaks the terms of a trust, the husband cannot be held responsible, provided it happened since 1935. Although the husband is no longer responsible since 1935 for his wife’s non-criminal misdeeds (he never could be held accountable for her crimes), he is still, so long as they live together, responsible to a great extent for her contracts, even if he knows nothing about them.

When a woman buys necessaries her husband generally has to pay for them. The question is, of course “What are necessaries?” That must depend, says the law, on the style of living the husband chooses to keep up; not the style he can afford to keep up.

Doctors’ bills, the medical expenses of keeping a wife well, are always a necessary, so is the cost of burying her when you fail to keep her well. So, apparently, if she is used to tl\at sort of thing, is a permanent wave. So, in one case, was the hire of a servant to look after her all the way to India with his passage home, though not £7OO worth of singing birds to cheer her up.

But once the wife has ceased to live with her husband, her right to pledge his credit goes. However, in order to escape all liability, the' husband must warn tradesmen who have supplied goods in the past not to let his wife have, any more. Wife Escapes Tax The wife, however, is never responsible for her tiusband’s necessaries, whatever their relative incomes. The reason? There is an obligation on a husband to support a wife, but there is no obligation on a wife to' support the husband. The last principle has been so far mitigated now that magistrates may make a maintenance order against a wife if the husband becomes a cnarge on the rates. Necessaries do not only extend to permanent waves and servants to India, they also include the payment of income tax. But the wife is never responsible for a husband’s tax, again quite irrespective of their incomes. In return for all this the husband is entitled to the “full companionsnip end services of his wife against all the world,” including her parents. He can sue for damages if she is enticed away from him or incited against him or injured in a collision in any way likely to prevent her from affording the companionship or rendering the services to which lie has a right. If she is hurt in a car smash ar.d gets damages for her injury out of the negligent driver, the husband can still get separate damages payable to himself for the loss of her companionship or services. But if she is killed there are, save in exceptional circumstances, no such damages, since all wives are moital. The old law says that “a husband hath by law power and dominion over Pis wife and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty and may beat her, but not in a violent manner, which is to say not with a stick