MATRIMONIAL CAUSES ACT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23692, 27 December 1938, Page 18

MATRIMONIAL CAUSES ACT

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION INCURABLE INSANITY (From Oub Own Correspondent) LONDON, Nov 24. The case in which a woman sought to prevent her sister being divorced on the ground of incurable insanity. v hich raised for the first time an important cmestion under the Matrimonial Causes Act. was before the president. Sir Sydnov Merriman. in the Divorce Court yesterday. . The point was whether a person pi unsound mind has been "continuously under care and treatment when he or she has been granted absence from the mental hosnital under orders tor provisional discharge The Act allows a divorce if the respondent is incurably of unsound mind and has been continuously under care and treatment for at least five vears immediately preceding the presentation of the petition Mi Alfred Bernard Shipman. a cashier, of St. Cuthbert road. Bridlington, Yorkshire, asked for divorce from Mrs Louisa Moxon Shipman. to whom ho was married it Bridlington in 1907 Mrs Shipman's guardian, her sister. Mist Edith Wilkinson contested the case on her behalf. The case for Mr Shipman was thai in 1910 his wife was certified and admitted to the East Riding County Mental Hospital at Beverley She was discharged in 1924. but in 1926 was certified, and returned to the hospital, wher she :iad been ever since, with the exception of periods up to last year, when she was allowed to stay with her sister for several weeks at a time under orders for provisional discharge. Miss. Wilkinson contended that her sister had not bee.i "continuously under care and treatment" for the five 'ears. Evidence in the case was given in July and Sir Boyd Merriman adiourned the hearing for further argument. The Solicitor-general (Sir Terence O'Connor, K.C.) and Mr Theodore Turner now appeared for the King's Proctor. DEFINITION OF DETENTION The Solicitor-general said that detention under the Lunacy Act did not necessarily mean being detained under lock and key If an insane person was sent away from the asylum to see how he got on with his family and whether he -;ould be left with them for an indefinite time, the patient would no less be under detention. Such detention did not always involve continuous confinement. "Detention." Sir Terence O'Connor .aid, "exists, in my submission, as long as the disability dealt with by the reception order remains in existence." Judgment was rserved.