INCOMPATIBILITY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14974, 22 May 1914, Page 5

INCOMPATIBILITY.

NO GROUND FOR DIVORCE IN NEW ZEALAND. (SPECIAL TO "'THE KRESS.") AUCKLAND, May 21. The fact that incompatibility of temper is not a ground of divorco in New. Zealand was strongly emphasised in the Auckland Supreme Court to-day by his Honours Mr Justice Cooper, in tho course of tho hearing of a case in which a Thames boilermaker petitioned for a divorce from his wife on tho grounds of desertion.

The defence was put forward that respondent was forced to leave her husband on tho ground of his bad temper and ill-treatment.

Mr "R. A Singor was contending that the petitioner was of a very dour and morose .disposition, when his Honour intervened with the remark that that was not an issue to put before the jury. In America divorces were possible on tho ground of incompatibility of temper, but in Now Zealand it must bo something more than that. ' Human nature was not perfect, and there were many hundreds of married people who had bad tempers; but to allow the proposition to bojput to the jury that because one or both of two parties had a bad temper was a justification of the one leaving the other was not law. • In his summing up his Honour observed that it had been said by Mr Singer that if two parties were married and ono had a bad temper it was ajustification for one leaving the other. "I say emphatically it is not," said the judge; "the right of ono married person to leave tjio other on the ground of incompatibility of temper j does not exist in New Zealand. Even if two parties are unhappily matched, as happens in many oases, thero ehould be a mutual desire to get on as well as possible. What we justify in a woman leaving a man or vice versa is something much more than incompatibility of temper."