TRIAL MARRIAGES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1106, 7 June 1913, Page 4

TRIAL MARRIAGES.

A DAW FOR GIRDS UNDER 18. According to Justice Cohalan, of the Supreme Court of New York, trial marriage in that State is a legalised institution for girls under eighteen years of age. In recent years j udges have frequently dwelt on the anomalous conditions which permit parents of boys and girls who have married in haste with the aid of a complaisant magistrate or clergyman to apply to the courts for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds that the contracting parties were under age at the time of the ceremony. American girls are said to love a runaway match, and the 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 the courts to annul the_ marriage. Even in cases in which the parents gave their consent the courts have no recourse but to grant the desired annulment.

Such, at all events, was the decision of Justice Cohalan, who lately heard a suit to annul the marriage of Mrs Eva Mundell Coster, an actress in the Drury .Lane drama, "The Whip,” with Mr Norman B. Coster, ap pfficial in the employ of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Company. "In effect,” said the judge, "the present law in New York State permits a girl whs majrrips under thp age of eighteen, with the pqnsept 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 pprpoges providing in such cases for trial marriages. The remedy for this state of things lies with

the Legislature and not the courts.” Justice Cohalan found that Mrs Coster’s mother consented to the marriage, but the evidence of her father and the doctor who attended her at ’her birth established conclusively that the bride was exactly seventeen when she was married. She is not yet eighteen, and was therefore entitled to demand an annulment of the marriage.