JUDGE’S RULING ON DIVORCE

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 2

JUDGE’S RULING ON DIVORCE

Wife’s Refusal To Have Children (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, May 6.

Lord Merriman has ruled in the Divorce Court that a husband has no right to leave his wife if she refuses to have any more children.

He gave the ruling after hearing an appeal by a woman against the dismissal by Magistrates of her complaints of desertion and wilful neglect to maintain against her husband. She had refused to have a third child.

Lord Merriman said the Magistrates had found that her refusal was governed by the same principle as a refusal to have any children at all. It vas a finding for which there was no authority. If it were a legitimate finding where was it to stop? “At the scriptural quiverful, which I believe is three—or does it stop at four or five?” Lord Merriman said.

“If a wife says ‘I don’t think we had better have any more children’ is that a ground for leaving her? It would certainly make havoc of. the conception of marriage if that sort of argument were to prevail. “Having raised what many people think of as a sufficiently large family a husband could then say ‘thank you very much, you refuse to have any more children, I am justified in leaving you.’ That is reducing marriage to absurdity.”