PERMANENT ALIMONY

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1933, Page 12

PERMANENT ALIMONY

RIGHTS OF FORMER WIFE a LONDON, February 15. A case in which a father is alleged, to have framed his will so as to pre tect his son from having to pay ai increased allowance to the wife wh< had divorced him was before Lori Merrivale, the President of the DivorcCourt, yesterday. Mrs. Mary Knox Spencer, former!) Mrs. Horniman, applied for the varia tion of a registrar’s report with regard to permanent alimony by ordering John Eric Horniman, a tea mer chanty to pay her more than £750 i year. Mr. T. J. O’Connor, K.C., for Mrs. Spencer, said that she had an income of her own amounting to £1,050. Mr. Horniman had an income of over £6,000. They had had four children before the wife obtained a divorce ir May, 1931. She had since remarried. When Mr. Horniman’s father diet he gave his son a settled legacy oi £lO,OOO, which was to be held at the discretion of trustees if Mrs. Spencer applied for an increase of alimony or maintenance. The father died worth about £300,000. Lord Merrivale, giving judgment, said that the claim presented on be half of the wife raised questions oi gravity in respect of the relative rights and obligations of parties whenever a decree of dissolution of marriage was granted on a wife’s petition so as to permit a claim of secured maintenance under the Judica ture Act, 1925. After reviewing the authorities or the subject, the President said he was perplexed at the assumption confidently made, irrespective of the facts, that there was a prima facie rule that a divorced husband should share his fortune with a former wife on the footing of permanent alimony which would be secured to a wife who had become judicially separated. The present case was one not of discretion but of arithmetic, and it was manifestly proper that the order should be made in the terms proposed in the registrar’s report.