MARRIED SOLDIERS' PAY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2732, 29 March 1916, Page 6

MARRIED SOLDIERS' PAY

• AN ALLE3ED SCANDAL. By Telegraph—Press Association^ Wanganui, March 28. At the weekly meeting of the Wanganui Patriotic Committee, Mr. L. Cohen brought up a matter of considerable importance to wives of soldiers. He said that as the law now stood it was possible for a married man to disregard the claims_ of his wife and family and allocate his pay to some other person, which was a perfectly scandalous condition of affairs. It was within the knowledge of I those-having to do. with courts that this _ sort of thing was actually being _ done, with the result that wives and children were being' thrown upon patriotic societies for public charity, while'money which ought to be allocated for their support was, going into quite improper channels, in some cases women with whom soldiers had been intimate receiving the money which rightly belonged to the men's legitimate dependents. He mentioned one case in which' a young woman in [Wellington was reputed to be drawing the allocated portion of the pay of three different soldiers. An order of the Court was powerless to effect a remedy, and the only thing for it was the immediate alteration of the law.

The committee decided to at once bring the matter under the notice.of the Minister.