PARIS THE MECCA OF DIVORCEES.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 25 January 1926, Page 2

PARIS THE MECCA OF DIVORCEES.

The Divorce Court mills are grinding faster and faster yet, as more and more money is thrust into the slot to make the wheels go round. So many American divorce suits are being taken there that the French lawyers have protested against the “favored nation” treatment, which they allege is being accorded to foreigners, and more especially Americans.

Reno was once the Mecca of all Americans requiring a divorce on quick and easy terms. Now it is Paris. One day it is the wife of an American film sheik who announces that she is going to Paris to- lodge her complaint. The next one hears of the ex-widow of a famous singer who has sought the assistance of the French judges legally to separate her from her new English husband.

Rich and the less rich, the famous and the unknown, are all rushing across the Atlantic to secure divorces in Paris. More and more American lawyers open “law offices” in this city, and as they have to employ French avocats to appear before the judges, the only local lawyers who complain against the American divorce rush are those who have not yet been employed by the American lawyers.

The reasons for the popularity of the Paris divorce are no publicity, comparatively low cost, the ease in establishing a domicile and of securing a decree. The French newspapers are prohibited by a strictly enforced law from reporting or commenting on a divorce case. They may publish the bare fact that Mme. X. has been divorced from Monsieur X. by a verdict given in her favor, and that is all. None of the daily papers, in point of fact, ever mentions anything at all about divorce, though occasionally one of the lighter Parisian weeklies will make a veiled allusion, with initials only. The one organ which gives names and dates,of divorces is the Petites Affiehes, a weekly officially published newspaper.

It is only since the war that Americans have become aware of the ease of French divorce—and hence the more recent rush. The American correspondents here, who are required to cable home every possible fact- concerning a divorce granted, in France, were laced with many difficulties. This caused a bright young French lawyer to establish what is practically a “divorce trust” to provide the American correspondents with divorce news. “Incompatibility” of temperament is the most favored ground for divorce. It means so much—o r so little. After the suit has been entered the judge sends for the parties to the action to attend a “meeting of recoucilia.tion.” It is usual for one of the parties not to attend the meeting, often neither responds, but sometimes both.

So much trouble was caused at the Palais de Justice by irate wives that just a year ago the authorities built two steel “cages” to replace the former waiting-rooms. Here women waiting to appear before the judge are requested to bide their time—and are locked in! If the reconciliation fails, the suit goes speedily to. a conclusion, and a divorce is pronounced, usually within a period of not longer than six months. Sometimes the reconciliation is a success, and the couple depart arm-in-arm to live “happy ever after.” This actually occurred not long ago in the case of a former American heiress and a French nobleman.