EXTRAVAGANT WIVES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 323, 23 January 1930, Page 1

EXTRAVAGANT WIVES.

CURBING THEIR VICE. Great interest has been aroused by the decision of Mr Justice Hill in a London divorce court that a husband is justified in refusing to live with his wife when she is so extravagant as to jeopardise his means of livelihood. Nobody is more pleased by the decision than dressmakers and storekeepers in the West End, who are the victims of wives who run up bills which their husbands refuse to hononur. One of these dressmakers, who has a shop in Bond Street, said to a London Daily Mail reporter: — “ There is not a fashionable dressmaker in the West End who does not lose thousands of pounds a year because women incur heavy bills which their husbands will not acknowledge. “ It is a scandal, and we welcome Mr Justice Hill’s decision. I regard the treatment we get from some of these women as a sort of blackmaik They run up accounts knowing full well that their husbands will not meet the debts. “ The awful thing is that we cannot refuse them, knowing that they are prominent people. And we have

no redress.” Mr Justice Hills’ decision is also welcomed by the Divorce Law Reform Union. The secretary said:— “ We are anxious that there should be justice for the man as well as the woman. A spendthrift wife is a very grave disability for a man who is not in a good position. He never knows where he stands. “ A .most serious case is that of a woman with money who marries a man who is not very well off. She will spend her own money and then run up debts, and the husband has to pay under the present law. “ That is why we want equality. We think that the wife should be made responsible for her debts.”