DIVORCE IN SYDNEY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19162, 19 November 1927, Page 16

DIVORCE IN SYDNEY.

♦ RECORD NUMBER OF PETITIONS (from our own correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 10. The present year will be a record one in divorce in New South Wales. ' So far this year 1500 petitions have been lodged, compared with 1429 up to the same period in the previous twelve months. The fact, however, that marriages are being dissolved at an increasing rate does not necessarily connote a more than ordinarily loose moral fibre in the community; the extraordinary growth of population has a good deal to do with the increase. Of successful petitioners, women are again heading the list. This year, as in past years, desertion is the most popular gro'und of divorce, and the easiest route back to single bliss, although the Judges nowadays are far more exacting than they used to be when desertion is submitted as the ground of divorce. One of the leading figures associated with the Divorce Court in Sydney estimates that only about one marriage in four is a success, and that divorce will be made still easier. The consensus of opinion, however, is that the existing divorce law is quite elastic enough now, •and that if it is easier than it is to-day to snap the marriage bond in twain, Sydney will want considerably more than three Judges, sitting continuously, to deal legally with the most intimate of human relations, that of man and wife, and of parents and children.