DIVORCE TOO EASY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 255, 25 September 1935, Page 13

DIVORCE TOO EASY.

RUSSIA’S SOCIAL PROBLEM. Russia is acting on Stalin’s orders to cope with the evils of free divorce, the social consequences of which are troubling those in high places. Divorces are procurable in the Soveit Union with sn-u oelorit-i- that those at Reno are made to look funereal. "/jags’' tne name given to the registry office where births, deaths, marriages, and divorces are recorded, will marry a" couple at 4 p.m., when the office closes, and dissolve the marriage at 10 o’clock on the following morning when it reopens. The fee is only a few shillings, including the cost of a postcard informing the other party of the dissolution. It- is not necessary to give notice of a divorce, which is free as air. Alimony may be claimed by either partv, but it operates for only six mouths, and then only if the person claiming support is infirm. These conditions have been responsible for two divorces in everv five marriages. The gravest problem in free divorce, the Moscow correspondent of the Dsilv Telegraph says, is the growing number of children deserted. There were 142.000 prosecutions for such offences in 1933, and 200.000 in 1934. The Commissar of Justice has now made the minimum penalty for child desertion a year’s imprisonment instead of six months’, as formerly.

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