Crown Employees Exempt From Attachment Orders

Northern Advocate, 8 May 1941, Page 2

Crown Employees Exempt From Attachment Orders

The difficulties of being unable to enforce against the Crown a section of the Destitute Persons Act authorising the issue of attachment orders, because it was exempted from its provisions, were discussed at a meeting of the Canterbury the New Zealand Society for the Frotection of Women and Children.

In a le’fcr to the society, Mr. Barrer (honorary solicitor) explained that when any maintenance order had been made, the magistrate concerned could, by a provision in the act, make an attachment order for an employer of the defendant’against whom the maintenance order was made. This section, however, did not bind the Crown Employees on Government relief schemes and public,, works, who were usually the most flagrant defaulters in these affairs, were not liable to have deductions made from their wages. The Domestic Proceedings Act, 1939, gave power tc the Governor-General, by Order-in-Council, to declare that the Crown was bound by these orders, and it was desirable that some action should be directed in this way. The meeting agreed to recommend that the legal machinery for the issue of attachment orders to employees of the Crown should be invoked. Domestic Proceedings.

Mr Barrer also referred to a section of the Domestic Proceedings Act, 1939, providing for every information in an offence against the terms of the Destitute Persons Act to be heard by a magistrate sitting at the court nearest the place where the defendant lived or carried on business.

This altered the previous rule enabling the information to be dealt with at the Court where the order was made, the letter continued. It was evident that this prevision, while seeming to be in accordance with civil practice, in fact provided a husband with an easy refuge. By . changing his abode frequently he could appear before magistrates in different parts of New Zealand, who had not the benefit of hearing the earlier history of the case and did not know what weight could be atached to the excuses the defaulter might be advancing for nonpayment. In nearly all cases of this kind it was necessary to employ a distant solicitor or' maintenance officer who perhaps knew nothing of the facts of the case. The effect of the rule was to allow husbands, who wished to avoid their orders, almost unlimited licence for doing so.