INSANITY AND DIVORCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21618, 10 October 1933, Page 11

INSANITY AND DIVORCE

NEW SOUTH WALES BILL DIVERGENCE OF OPINION [from our own correspondent] SYDNEY, Sept. 28 The fires of controversy that have always surrounded the question of divorce from the insane have been rekindled in New South Wales by the introduction into the Legislative Assembly of a private member's bill which provides that, if a husband or wife has been a patient for three years in a mental hospital, that fact shall be a ground for divorce. The matter has been widely discussed in all sections of the community, and the forces for and against seem to be equally divided. In some quarters much bitterness has been imparted to the discussions, and it is significant that the actual discussion of the measure has been delayed, without any reasons being offered. It is certain that if the Government grants its blessing, and permits progress with the bill, it will have a rough passage. The five Anglican bishops in New South Wales have entered the controversy in no uncertain terms. In the first place, they urged that the State, in its own interests, should maintain, and not relax, the standard of its marriage laws. The legislature should refuse to place upon the statute book a measure which was a new and grave menace to the moral and social welfare of the community. The provision relating to the insane went far beyond any Australian legislation in the same direction. Other States required longer periods, varying from five to 10 years, and also a certificate that the patient was incurable. All such legislation, however, was a new departure in principle. All earlier legislation was based upon the principle that an application for divorce had to be founded on some violation of the marriage contract. The relief provided in any States, and now proposed for New South Wales for the partner of a husband or wife who had become insane was, it was urged, open to the gravest objections. Insanity was not an offence, but a misfortune. In some cases it might be, in some degree, the fault of the sufferer or the fault of the partner seeking relief by divorce, but in most cases it was the brcakdowfl of an innocent mind under the strain of life.

The bishops urged that it was an intolerable injustice foe.the law to bracket the insane with the unchaste and the intemperate. Insanity was recognised to be a disease, partly mental and partly physical. Why should insanity be made a ground for divorce, and not ptliisis or other diseases? they asked. Some of the best medical authorities refused to recognise any insanity as incurable. Divorce would bar the door of the home against the return of the recovered husband or wife.

Another provision in the bill is that, whatever were the original grounds for a legal separation, either part}', after having lived apart for seven years, might apply for divorce. The bishops contend that this would practically open the door to divorce by consent. The danger lay not in the risk of a misuse of the law in an individual case, but in the creation of a general habit of thinking that there was no discredit in divorce, and that it was a normal and respectable procedure to abandon the attempt to overcome "incompatability," and, instead, "arrange a divorce."