HUSBANDS AND WIVES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 10 July 1928, Page 3

HUSBANDS AND WIVES.

MENDING OF FAMILY JARS. SPECIAL COURT PROPOSED. Courts of Domestic Relations, similar to those that have been working successfully in America, are to bo established in Britain, if Mr Harry Snell’s bill is assented to by Parliament.

Miss Margaret Bondfield is one ot the measure’s enthusiastic supporters. Like Mr Snell, sh© is unmarried. She behoves, as he does, that domestic differences ought not to he thrashed out haphazardly in a Police Court, the- usual meeting place of the law-breaking drunkard, ' pickpocket and burglar. The Bill provides that the new Courts shall have complete jurisdiction over matrimonial cases, that their chairman shall always be experienced barristers, that they shall have their own well-staffed probation departments, and that they shall receive all money due under maintenance and similar orders.

“Our idea,” .said Air Snell, “is that the ordinary Police- Court, besides being terribly congested with other work, is not the right place for these delicate domestic matters to be investigated carefully and sympathetically. Sensitive human beings hesitate to disclose their home troubles ip such a quasi-criminal atmosphere. Further, if the Alagistrate is busy, lie may have to postpone the case for a week, and then, if no reconciliation has been brought about, lie oiten. has almost automatically to issue an order that practically parts the parties for over. During the emotion of the war there were thousands of hasty marriages. Young soldiers, straight from school and not knowing whether they would ever return from the trenches, married without any great thought. Now they are repenting bitterly. We are reaping a crop 01 these tragedies. Certainly it is , a laet that the number of separation eases—before Courts that already have. enough to do—are increasing considerably. The increase is so large, that one wonders whether the family as a social institution is in danger. “Couples are more likely to try to straighten out tlicir affairs if they can go to a special. Court specifically designed for dealing with them carefully and iTiidcrstandiiigly.”