TANGLED DIVORCE SUIT

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 4 December 1929, Page 9

TANGLED DIVORCE SUIT

DECREE REFUSED. PARTIES EQUALLY BLAMEWORTHY. COSTS OVER £BOOO. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright.) Received 2 p.m. to-day. SYDNEY, Dec. 4. A tangled divorce case which lasted seven weeks, with the costs totalling £B,OOO to £IO,OOO, ended with the parties as they were at the beginning. Tom Staubins Bakewell sought a divorce from Mary Gwendoline Bakewell, formerly Bruell, nee "Cantwell, on the ground of adultery with her former husband, Bruell, and another. Mrs. Bakewell denied the charge, but alleged that the husband had committed adultery with three other women and claimed a judicial separation on those grounds. The judgment- traversed the strange history oi their marital relationships. In 1921 Mrs. Bakewell, then Mrs. Bruell, sought a divorce from Bruell on the ground of adultery. The suit was undefended, and a decree nisi was granted, but the Crown intervened and the decree was rescinded, because it was shown that false evidence had been given; also that at the time the petition was filed Mrs. Bruell was living in adultery with Bakewell, her present husband. Three yeans later Bruell was granted a divorce on the ground of his wife’s adultery with Bakewell, who subsequently married her. Mr- Justice Owen’s judgment took 90 minutes to deliver. The case was the longest and most expensive in the N.S.W. State legal records.

The judge found that the allegations of adultery on 'both sides vyere proved and dismissed the suits and ordered Bakewell to pay his wife’s costs.