DECREE NISI RESCINDED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19291, 1 April 1926, Page 12

DECREE NISI RESCINDED.

APPEAL COURT DECISION. THE CAUSE OF SEPARATION. [BT TELEGRAPH. PRESS ASSOCIATION. J WELLINGTON. Wednesday. In the appeal case Chapman v. Chapman, Mr. Justice Alpcrs dealt with the facts as revealed in the evidence. The husband had committed adultery in tlie early stages of marriage which his wife condoned. Later on there were suspicious circumstances of adultery, and the parties separated under deed. The husband then went to the war, but when he came back his wife refused to return to him. The question involved was whether the condonation was an answer to the suggestion that the divorce was brought about by a wrongful act of petitioner. If it wero so startling results would ensue. The condonation of adultery could not blot it out. A clear principle was that the effect of the condonation was not a bar to relief but a pica to relief where divorce was taken on the ground of adultery. The Court should refuse its aid to anyone who did not come before it with clean hands. That was a doctrine of equity. It was regrettable in this caso that the wife did not petition herself, and end the intolerable burden the marriage had been. On the point whether a separation deed made in Australia was good in New Zealand as a ground for divorce, His Honor said any contract between the parties affecting their own matrimonial status should stand. Mr. Justice Sim agreed with Mr. Justice Alpers that appellant could rely on adultery of respondent as a bar to dissolution of the marriage. Mr. Justice MacGregor agreed that tbo judgment should be reversed on the ground that separation was due to a wrongful act of petitioner. The decree nisi should be rescinded. The appeal was allowed and the decree nisi was rescinded, with costs to the wife on the highest scale. The appeal was from a decision of Sir Robert Stout. The ground of the divorce was three years' separation, and the appeal was based* on the ground that the separation was due to the adultery and wrongful acts of the petitioner.