DIVORCE CASES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21360, 1 June 1939, Page 4

DIVORCE CASES

Attitude of Chief Justice Period of Decrees By Telegraph—Press Association WELLINGTON, May 31. The attitude of the Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers; toward divorce cases involving decrees for restitution of conjugal rights was stated by him during the hearing of such a petition to-day. His Honour said that divorce could be obtained after mutual separation for three years, but there was another method which avoided that wait. One spouse might leave the other and the next day the one who was left might write requesting the other to return. If the other did not return there could be proceeded with a petition for restitution. Generally speaking, where the petitioner was entitled to such a decree an order was made, the decree to be complied with within 14 days after service. That meant that instead of waiting three years people could obtain a divorce in very little more than three months.

That was the law, but Sir Michael said he saw no reason why the Courts should go in advance of the legislature and make divorce still more easy. To his mind that was done where leave was granted to set a case down for a sitting for which there was no right to set it down, unless the position was guarded as he proposed to guard it in the present case, by the fixing of a substantial period in which the decree for restitution could be complied with. There was frequently the suspicion of collusion in a case of this kind, said the Chief Justice, though he was satisfied there was no suspicion against petitioner in this particular case. The force of what he was saying could be seen, he continued, from the particulars of another case which was before the Court. A decree for restitution was served on February 13, to be complied within 14 days. On March 1 that was followed by the filing of a petition for divorce. Even though petitioner had stated—because it was the duty of the Court always to question—that he or she was anxiously desirous of obtaining a decree for restitution, not for the purpose of getting a divorce but because he or she was genuinely anxious to have the spouse back, the course he proposed to adopt in the case he was dealing with and which he would adopt in other cases where he thought it necessary, was to fix the period of three months instead of the usual 14 or 21 days in which the order for restitution could be complied with. That would not hurt the petitioner and would prevent respondent, if that was respondent’s real object, from obtaining freedom by what, after all, was a “side win” at an unreasonably early date. It would give an opportunity of reconciliation if that were possible.