NEED A WIFE TELL?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23690, 23 December 1938, Page 10

NEED A WIFE TELL?

TALKS WITH HUSBAND JUDGE SAYS “NO ” (From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON. Nov. 24. Judgment to the effect that a widow may not be comnelled to disclose communications ma3e to her by her husband during their marriage was given by Mr Justice Simonds in the Chancery Division. His lordship refused an application by Mrs Florence Annie Shenton, who wished to deliver interrogatories to Mrs Edith Lilian Tyler, widow of Mr Edmund Deeble Tyler, to substantiate her claim that Mr Tyler left his widow the residue of his estate—about £70,000 —subject to a promise that she would pay Mrs Shenton £2 a week for life. Mrs Tyler, who was defendant in an action by Mrs Shenton, relied on the rule of law that wife may not be forced to disclose any communication made to her by her husband. Mr Roger Turnbull, for Mrs Shenton, contended that the rule had no application to a widow. “ BETRAYAL ALLEGATION ” Mr Justice Simonds said that Mrs Tyler denied that any such wish was expressed by her husband or promise made. The proposed interrogatories were objected to on the ground that any communication made by Mr Tyler to his wife, or by her to him, was protected by the old Common Law rule of the inviolability of any confidence which had passed between husband and wife—a rule which went back for many centuries. A widow always was an admissible witness, as was a woman who was divorced, but, whether a widow or a divorced woman, she was not compellable or admissible as a witness in regard to matters which had passed between herself and her husband during the married state. It was said that in this case the widow, by pleading this rule, might be enabled, for her own benefit, to betray the confidence put in her by her husband. That might be so, but it was not possible, in his lordship’s judgment, to make a. breach in the general rule of Common Law, because, in a particular case, it might lead to injustice.