A LAW THAT CANNOT BE ENFORCED.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18162, 26 April 1921, Page 9

A LAW THAT CANNOT BE ENFORCED.

HUSBANDS GONE FOR EVER. (Correspondent Christchurch Press). LONDON, March 9. “My husband has left me, and is now on his way to New Zealand." Thus a woman applicant to Mr Green, the magistrate at Tottenham Police Court, yesterday. What the magistrate replied was: “Thqn you have lost him for ever.” A few days ago Mr Green granted, under a recent Act of Parliament, to a wife whose husband had gone to the colonies, a summons for desertion, and he appealed to the Lord Chancellor to put the law in motion. The Lord Chancellor had replied that such was impossible. “He says it can’t be done,” added Mr Green. “If I grant you a summons it will go on the file and remain there for ever and ever. Husbands who fly to the colonies are gone for ever.” As it happens, the Tottenham magistrate was only one to whom such application was yesterday made. Another was Mr Forbes Lankaster, the North London Magistrate, who told an applicant that he had no evidence before him that the Act had been adopted by the Dominions of South Africa and Canada, nor had the Lord Chancellor framed regulations under which courts of summary jurisdiction could proceed. The Act wa/ therefore inoperative so far as the colonies were concerned, and there was no power to issue the summonses. That being so, he directed that the fees paid by women applicants should be returned. One of them asked: “What is the good of passing Acts of Parliament if you cannot enforce them?” The Act referred to was passed on August 16th, 1920, “for the enforcement of maintenance orders in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and the British Dominions and Protectorates.”