VALUE OF DIVORCE

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2297, 2 July 1921, Page 1

VALUE OF DIVORCE

WHEN AFFECTION ENDS

JUDGE SALMOND’S VIEWS,

“All divorce’is a good thing so far as it frees the parties from an obligation which is no longer based on that mutual affection and esteem in which it had or ought to have had its origin, and restores to them the right to live their own lives and.to seek happiness in the way of honour,” said Mr Justice Salmond in the course of a judgment in the Supreme Court in Wellington. “But

all divorce possesses at the same time the possibility of public mischief, inasmuch as it tends, to lessen the sense of responsibility with which men and women enter into

marriage, and the fidelity and eontent, with which they accept and obey the obligations resulting from it. It is for this Court in the exercise of the discretionary authority which the Legislature has seen fit to entrust to it, to weigh this private benefit to the parties against this possibility of public mischief, and to grant or refuse a dissolution accordingly. “This being so, the chief elements for consideration are the reasons for the separation between parties and the duration of that separation. Where separation has been based on grave and sufficient grounds (here will commonly be no reason of public policy for refusing a divorce. In such a case the marriage lias irremediably come to an end de facto, and its purposes have permanently failed. It is otherwise, however, where the separation has been unjustified. berng the outcome of mere levity and the wanton disregard By the parties of the obligations of the matrimonial slate, or being a mere device to secure a dissolution of their marriage by mutual consent. - In such a case a decree may he pro-. perly refused altogether or granted only after a period of separation substantially in excess of the minimum period of three years established by the Legislature. The longer the duration of the separation, the less is the danger of public mis-* chief ensuing from such divorce, inasmuch as the necessary delay reduces die temptation to separate for insufficient reasons, or for- the purpose of procuring a dissolution of the marriage.”