JUDGE KETTLE ON SEPARATION ORDERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 443, 8 December 1908, Page 2

JUDGE KETTLE ON SEPARATION ORDERS.

On what grounds ought a separation order to hi granted ? In giving a decision in regard to a somewhat unusual case, in which an application was made for a separation order at the Auckland Police C/urt on Tuesday, • Mr C. C, Kettle, S.M., referred to the law on the subject at some' length. He judgment

on the point as follows : “ When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften by mutual accomodation that yoke which they know they cannot shake off ; they become good husbands and good wives, from the necessity of -remaining husbands and wives—for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes. The causes which warrant separation must be grave and weighty, and such .as show an absolute imporsiblity that the duties of the married life can be discharged. . . Mere austerity of temper, petulance of manners, rudeness of language, a want of civil attention and accommodation, even occasional sallies of passion, it they do not threaten bodily harm, do not amount to legal cruelty ; they are high moral offences in the marriage state undoubtedly, not innocent surely in any state of life, but still they are not that cruelty against which the law can relieve. Under such misconduct of either of the parties, for it may exist on one side as well as on the other, the suffering parly must bear in some degree the consequence of an injudicious marriage, must subdue by decent resistance, or by prudent conciliation, and if this cannot be done, both must suffer in silence.”