GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4956, 26 March 1926, Page 3

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE.

AMAZING CHANGE,S- < "If. the judgment of.-the la.te Chief Justice (Sir Robert Stout) is sound," said. Sir John Findlay in .the: Appeal, •sr Court at Wellington on Tuesday, "this case’.provides an interesting commeiitary upon. ..the startling changes, that have taken place, in recent years in •' New Zealand,, not only in our legislation as to jus-tiflajjle grounds for di- • > vorce, but also in the view of the judiciary’with re&pe’ct to that legislation.. There was a time in the history? of our law when both the Legislature and the judiciary were dominatedl by the ecclesiastical doctrine • ■ that'those whom God hath joined to'^gether( let no man put asunder,’ so -J that until quite recent years the?a,dulterytof a' husband afforded, no SU'ffi- ? cient ground for his: wife - divorcing him.. -The decision of the* late 'Chief r Justice,-,if sound, shows, .that we in New Zealand,. . have’' arrived ■at .the • amazing stage .- in our matrimonial legislation .that "when the long-con- . tinned adulterous misconduct of the husband causes and results in a separation, that adulterous, husband may .invoke that separation as a ground for the 'divorce of an innocent wife. Surely a ? strange commentary .this •’ upon our belauded sanctity of mar- • riage as the ; keystone of? our .social • structure- Stranger . still i'p this, case when it is disclosed th.aU according to Sir Robert Stout, a "husband who . has. entered'-into a -separation, deed caused by his own adulterous conduct can, by changing his domicile, make the deed a. ground for divorce, when ■ under the law’of his then domicile it was not, and is, not, such a gro,nnd.’’ -