RUSH FOR DIVORCES

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17839, 11 October 1929, Page 8

RUSH FOR DIVORCES

BIG INCREASE IN AUSTRALIA.

A LONG QUEUE. A professor abroad has suggested that spouses unable to jog along comfortably together in matrimonial harness should be permitted mutually to release themselves from the traces. Without testing this plan an increasing number of New South Wales couples are finding the divorce law sufficiently wide to allow them 't-o escape the marriage bonds, says a Sydney paper. Before the war the average number of petitions in New South Wales was between 500 and 600. In 1915 the figures jumped, and by the end of the war, in November, 1918, they had rushed up to 1500 petitions a year. Much alarm was expressed at the position then, but there was no appreciable diminution in the following year, and ever since the average lias been between 1500 and 1600. Placing the average figures at 1500, no fewer than 15,000 petitions have been lodged at Hie Divorce Office in New South Wales in the last 10 years. So rapidly arc petitions lodged that each year there are arrears of suits not dealt with. Although three judges have been attacking ttic formidable list this year, it is estimated that several hundred eases will have to he left over till 1930. Say £SO for cacti of the 15,000 suiis, the cost, of divorce litigants in the last 10 years has been £750,000 —a. feast for the lawyers.