SEPARATION CASE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4473, 21 November 1933, Page 5

SEPARATION CASE

FURTHER HEARING. DECISION RESERVED. Failure to maintain were the grounds advanced by Anne Jane Christina Chisnall in her application for separation and maintenance orders filed against Patrick Jubilee Chisnall, when the case was heard in the Courthouse to-day before Mr. F. Levien, S.M. This case was heard last Court day, when the grounds were persistent cruelty and failure to maintain. His Worship non-suited plaintiff, holding that persistent cruelty had not been substantiated, and that the husband had not time then to show his failure to maintain. The plaintiff stated that she had been married three years, and she considered she had been treated anything but fairly. Witness went on to detail the assaults which she alleged in the evidence at the last Court day had taken place. Between these two major assaults there were always arguments, and he had threatened her on several occasions and struck her once or twice. She took the threat that he had made on the 20th October that he would murder her if she returned seriously enough to prevent her going back to the house. Since that date she had received no maintenance or offer of maintenance. “You have gone away before now?” cross-examined Mr. Low. “Yes —to Tauramunui.” “And I suppose you said you would not come back?” —“Yes.” Mr. Low: “I put it to you that you have left him about half a dozen times or more, and each time told him you would not come back to him?” “I have when he was drinking. I have come back, but I will not come back this time to be knocked about. As long as I am maintained until I am strong enough to work, I will be satisfied.” His Worship: “I think you said last Court day that you could give as much as you receive in verbal warfare.” “Well, I don’t think I can stand up to a man.” She said she had not complained of failure to maintain on previous occasio'ns because her health then allowed her to work. Patrick Chisnall said that during the three years he had been married his wife had left him 12 or 13 times, sometimes for a month, sometimes for a night. The trouble was her people. They came in a'nd lived with her. As regards the assault, she had hit him first with the shovel and then he admitted that he took the shovel away from her and struck her. He had to tell her the furniture was hers, or her people would have every stick of it. At certain times his wife was all right. At others she went right off her head, but he felt that if a writ could be issued for keeping her family away things would be all right. The home was still open to her. In answer to Mr. Paterson, he held that it was not true that on most of the occasions his wife had left him it was only for a night while he was drinking. The stories of the assaults were ridiculous. If he was such a rotter as she had made him out, why had she always come back? She was a good wife until these fits came over her. He had objected to her coming home from a dance, which ended at 12, at half past three, but he denied that he was always suspicious of her carrying on with other men behind his back. “Is this the way you argue with her?” asked Mr. Paterson. “I don’t get a chancel” defendant replied. “Is it not a case that every row with your wife is when you have been drinking?”

“Certainly not. The whole trouble is family interference. They are trying to live on me and it certainly must cause rows.” Decision was reserved.