DIVORCE LAW CHANGES

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 16 November 1929, Page 11

DIVORCE LAW CHANGES

ADVOCATED BY SOCIAL REFORMERS

T) EVOLUTIONARY changes in the British divorce laws were advocated at the third International Congress of . the World League of Social Reform, in session in London. Specially striking were the views of Dr., W. F. iGeikie-Cobb, Rector of St. Etlielburga’s, in the city, and president of the Marriage Law Reform League. Dissolution of marriage, he said, should be dependent on the mutual eon. sent of the parties only, as was the ease in Old Rome. That ending should be respected by the State. ‘“But England,” he continued, “a priest-ridden country, still lags behind. It will take it another 100 years to appreciate the words of John Sheldon, that, ‘of all the actions of a man’s life, his marriage concerns himself the most, yet, of all his actions it is the most meddled with..by other people.”

Amendment of the marriage laws to allow divorce in cases of incurable insanity was advocated by Dr. Bernard Hollander, the well-known alienist. Marriage was the most important step that a human being could take, he said, yet the law placed practically no restrictions upon it. With the exception of the idiot and the raving maniac, who legally were unable to make a contract .binding upon themselves, there was no one, so far as the English law was concerned, so diseased, crippled, or deformed that he. .or she might not marry and become the parent of a suffering, helpless family. And once a couple was tied, tied they must stay. In an ideal community, no doubt, the first precautions to prevent individual misery and the transmission of disease would be to prohibit marriages of unsuitable persons. If medical certificates as to the bodily and mental health of candidates for marriage were enforced, the marriage of at least the worst types of degenerates might be stopped. 'But since such control was

still regarded as an infringement of the rights of the individual,. the next best step was to try to obtain facilities for the legal dissolution of marriage when one of the partners was suffering from incurable insanity. The greatest danger to the future race came from those afflicted with recurrent insanity; for they were periodically given their liberty, and might bring tainted children into the world before they had another relapse. “It would be best if people who had an attack of insanity prior to their marriage, or who are suffering from weak-mindedness were not allowed to marry at all,” Dr. Hollander concluded. “Antecedent epilepsy or antecedent recurrent insanity, if concealed at the time of the contract, should render a marriage void. If it be a hardship for the insane patient to have his marriage annulled, it is a still greater •hardship, and productive of more evil, that a sane man or woman should be tied for life to a partner who is incurably insane, and that the evil should be handed on to generations that follow. ’ ’ In 1909, it may be recalled, a strong Royal Commission was set up to examine the divorce law. It sat three years, performed a huge work, and reported that the grounds of divorce should be extended to include desertion, cruelty, incurable insanity, drunkenness, and life sentences of imprisonment. But none of them has yet been agreed to, * and it is still not possible in England to divorce anybody unless he or she is proved to have committed adultery. The “Daily Chronicle” profoundly regrets the attitude of the churches, not only for the sake of divorce reform, but fo.r that of religion. Few spectacles do more to discredit organised religion than that of the religious organisations in this matter fighting, as Gamaliel might, have said, against God.'