MAINTENANCE CLAIM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19204, 21 June 1924, Page 10

MAINTENANCE CLAIM.

THE EE MONTHS MARRIED. AN UNSYMPATHETIC MAGISTRATE (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, June 20. “I have no sympathy with those women who throw up a billot to catch hold of old men, and after a row expect to be pensioned off for life, ’ said Mr F. K. Hunt, S.M., at the Magistrate’s Court to-day, when a woman sought maintenance from her husband, a retired railway servant of Mercer, to whom she was married three months ago, Mr Schramm, who appeared for the who, said that the husband’s doclaralinn was that ho would not keep her “even for Die King of England. ' The Magistrate: This is a case of a middle-aged woman marrying an oid fnol Mr Luxford (for Ihe husband): She does not call herself middle-aged. She says she is 6b. I think 66 is more like it. The Magistrate: She may have a mental defect, but (hat is no reason why the country should keep her. Mr Luxford; She was a housekeeper until she got' into the toils of a matrimonial bureau. Mr Schramm said that the woman had declared that defendant’s' grandchild was born out of wedlock because the parents were married at a registry office, and his reply had been that such a doctrine was absolutely wicked. Evidence was given by the husband that ho was a railway employee who was retired because of mental unfitness. Hip pension was £7 8s *ld per month, and he made a few pounds out of grazing land, which he owned at Mercer, The Railway Department had taken o. acres for railwaymen’s cottages, and he was to receive £ISOO. but he had a loan of £IOOO from the State Advances Department and £SOO from a mercantile firm. J he /balance of uio land, 150 acres, was worth about £lO per acre, Mr Schramm: Do ycu ' wear you never had a lank balance of £800? Witness: Never in my life. The Magistrate: Perhaps that was a bait.—(Laughter.) Mr Schramm: Do ’•ou swear your property is not valued at £10,000? The Magistrate: Do not, bo absurd. The wnole of Mercer is not worth £IO,OOO The woman, in reply to a question from the bench, said that her age was 65. T"ho Magistrate; Thirty-five! She ha» got the figures the wrong w r ay round, “This woman got hold of this man through a registry office,” continued Mr Hunt. “She was earning good money a.i a housekeeper, and was in one place for seven years. After being married for one month she made most horrible accusations against her husband. These allegations proved to be absolutely unfounded, and creations of her own mind. She loft him and started proceedings in which I made no order. Since then I have received a medical certificate that, she is unfit for work at present. As long as she thinks she can live on her husband she will never find work. I will make an order for 10s per week.”