TRIAL MARRIAGES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1755, 21 May 1913, Page 7

TRIAL MARRIAGES.

A "LAW" FOR GIRLS UNDER EIGHTEEN. New York, April i. According to Justice Cohalan, of tho Supremo Court of New York, trial marriage in this State is a legalised institution for girls under eighteen years of age.

In recent years judges have frequently dwelt on the anomalous conditions, which permit parents of boys and girls who have married in haste with tho aid of a complaisant magistrate or clergyman to apply to tho Courts for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that the contracting parties were under ago at the time of the ceremony. American girls are said to love a runaway match, and tho excitement of climbing down an unnecessary rope ladder or driving a motor-car to some town near by and there rousing from his slumbers an official competent to pronounce them man and wife appeals irresistibly to many youthful imaginations. The sequel to such unions is not unusually an application to tho Courts to annul the marriage. Even ill cases iii which the parents gave their consent tho Courts have no recourse but to grant tho desired annulment. Such, at all events, was the decision of Justice Cohalan, who yesterday heard a suit to annul tho marriage of Mrs. Eva Mundell Coster,/an actress in the Dnirj* Lano drama, "The Whip/' with Mr. Norman B. Coster, an official in the employ of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company. "In effect," said the judge, "the present law in New York State permits a girl who marries under the age of eighteen, with tho consent of her parents, and leaves her husband before she attains that age, to come into Court and. as a matter of course, obtain a decree of annulment. This is to all intents and purposes providing in such cases for trial marriages. Tho remedy for this stato of things lies with tho Legislature and not tho Courts."

Justice Cohalan found hat Mrs. Coster's mother consented to the marriage, but the evidence of her father and tho doctor who attended at her birth established conclusively that tho bride was exactly seventeen when she was married. She is not yet eighteen, and was thereforo entitled to demand an annulment of tho marriage.--"Daily Mail."