THE STRICT LETTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 27, 3 February 1939, Page 2

THE STRICT LETTER

DIVORCE PETITION DIFFICULT POINT RAISED LONDON, Dec. 12. Sir Boyd Merriman, President of the Divorce Court, gave reserved judgment in a case, which, he said, raised “a vital and difficult point” under the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937. He dismissed with costs the petition of Mr. Alfred Bernard Shipman, of Bridlington, Yorks, seeking divorce from Mrs. Louisa Moxon Shipman on the ground of incurable insanity. In 1915, eight years alter her marriage, Mrs. Shipman was certified and admitted to a mental hospital at Beverley. She was discharged in 1924, but in 1926 was recertified and returned to the hospital. She had been there ever since except for periods of several weeks when the hospital authorities allowed her to stay with her sister, Miss Edith Wilkinson, under order for provisional discharge. Miss Wilkinson, who. as guardian of her sister, contested the petition, contended that she had not been "continually under care and treatment” for five years immediately preceding the petition, and that therefore the requirements of the Act relating to persons of unsound mind had not been fulfilled. Sir Boyd Merriman said he was satisfied that a cure in Mrs. Shipman’s case was impossible. The question whether she could be held to have been detained for the prescribed period of five years raised a vital and difficult point of great general importance. The Judge held that the reception order affecting Mrs. Shipman re-' mained in force at all material times. As far as the medical superintendent of the hospital was concerned, there was never any necessity for the wife to “continue to be detained” at all. Nothing could be done for her in the hospital beyond the social treatment.

But, on the wording of the Matrimonial Causes Act itself, Sir Boyd said, he could not bring himself to hold that the liability to be detained, if and when the reception order was called out of abeyance, was the same thing as actual detention. He therefore found that Mr. Shipman had not established his case under the Act.