N.S. WALES BILL

Hokitika Guardian, 14 October 1933, Page 6

N.S. WALES BILL

INSANITY AND DIVORCE.

•DIVERGENCE OF OPINION.

SYDNEY, 'September 28. The fires of controversy that have always surrounded the question of divorce from tiie insane have been rekindled in New South Wales by the introduction fo tbc legislative Assembly or a private member’s bill which pi;o,vide.s that, if a husband or wife has been. a patient for three years' in a mental hospital, that fact shall be a ground for divorce. T.he matter has been widely discussed

in all sections of. the community, and the forces for*and against seem to be

equally divided. In some .quarters much bitterness has been imparted to the discussions, and it is significtuit that the

Actual discussion of the measure has been delayed, without any reasons ibeing offered. It is certain that if the Government grants its blessing, and permits progress with the bill, it will have a- , rough passage. TJie five Anglican bishops in New -South Wales have entered the contro-

versy in no .uncertain terms. In the first-place, they urged that the State, in its own interests, should maintain, and not relax, the standard of its marriage laws. The legislature should refuse to place upon the statute book ■a measure which was a new and grave menace to the moral and social welfare of the community. The provision relating to the insane went far beyond'jany Australian legislation jtr the same direction. . -Other States "required longer periods, varying from five to 10 years, and also a certificate that the .patient was incurable. All such legislation, however, was a new departure in principle. All earlier legislation was based upon the principle that; an application for divorce had to be founded. on some violation of the marriage contract;

The relief provided in any States, ■ and now proposed for New South j Wales, for the partner of a husband or wife who had become insane was, it was urged, open to the gravest objections. Insanity was not an offence, but a misfortune. In some cases it might be, in some degree, the fault of the sufferer or the fault of the partner seeking relief by divorce, but in most cases it was the breakdown of an innocent mind under the strain of life. . The bishops urged that it was an intolerable injustice for the law to bracket the insane with the undhaste and the intemperate. Insanity was recognised Ao be a ; disease, partly mental and partly physical. Why should, in 1 sanity be lpade a ground for divorce, and not pthisis or other diseases? they asked. Some of the best medical authorities refused to recognise any insanity as incurable. Divorce would bar the door of the home against the return of the recovered husband or wife.

- Another .provision in the bill is' that, whatever were the original grounds for a legal separation, either' party, after having .lived apart for seven years, might apply for divorce. The bishops contend that this would practically open the door to divorce by consent. The danger lay not in the risk of a misuse of the law in an individual case, but in the creation of a general habit of thinking that there was no discredit in divorce, and that it was a, normal and respectable procedure to abandon the attempt to overcome “incompatabjlity,” and, instead, “arrange a divorce.”