DIVORCE LAW REFORM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19372, 9 July 1937, Page 13

DIVORCE LAW REFORM

AMENDMENT BY LORDS ALLOWABLE IN 3 YEARS DISCRETION OF JUDGES (Elec. Tol. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. July 8, 2.50 p.m.) LONDON, July 7. The House of Lords in the committee stage of the bill reforming the divorce law reduced the period in which divorce, is not allowable from five to three years, and agreed to a further amendment giving judges discretion to allow a petition to be presented within three years in cases ot exceptional hardship. The House rejected an amendment deleting five years of insanity as a ground for divorce. Lord Dawson said that the chances of recovery after five years of insanity were very small.

RESTITUTION OF RIGHTS DOMINION PROCEDURE APPEAL COURT RULING (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. An interesting judgment concerning the restitution of conjugal rights was delivered in the Appeal Court to-day in the Auckland case of Ronald Eric Phimester versus Anita Milly Phimester heard in July. This case was moved into the Court of Appeal for consideration in the absence of an express rule upon a certain aspect o suits for the restitution of conjugal rights and to consider the advisableness of laying clown a uniform practice, as any judge ot the Supreme Court might do, in the exercise of the discretion vested in him by section 8 of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, 1928. The question raised, however, is referable only to restitution suits in which the husband is the petitioner. The judgment staled that it should be laid "down as a rule of practice that a husband petitioner obtaining a decree for restitution should state cither as a footnote to the decree, or in a separate notice served upon the respondent, the house to which she is to return and the effect and possible result "of non-compliance with the decree, and that in any subsequent suit founded upon non-compli-ance with the decree, the court should require proof of the respondent wife having been given the requisite notice. In the particular case before the court it was held that the petitioner was entitled to the decree and the court below would pronounce it. Accordingly the petitioner would be required to satisfy the court in any subsequent suit for divorce that he had complied with the practice as set forth.