DIVORCE PUZZLES IN AMERICA

Shannon News, 9 October 1925, Page 1

DIVORCE PUZZLES IN AMERICA

The United States, tired of the confusion caused by its 48 widelydiffering- standards of legal marriage :;ml divorce, is beginning to demand uniformity in the law governing these two institutions. It is high time some sort of uniformity was achieved. It is possible for an American to be legally married to his wife in one State and to be living in unholy union with her in another. The statement that sleepingcar attendants have awakened husbands and wives as they crossed State boundaries or - accept the legal consequences is scarcely a fiction. It is common knowledge that Mr McCormick, .millionaire and former husband of Edith Rockefellor McCormick, could not return to his native State of Illinois because he had not fulfilled its requirements by waitng for a year before marrying- Ganna Walska, the opera singer. Reformers are alarmed by the rapid increase in the number of divorces which they, attribute partly to the example set by the cinema actors, whose frequent marriages and almost equally frequent are daily newspaper stories. A Baptist College President, Dr. S. P. Brooks, of Baylor University, Texas, advocates a law requiring the publication of the engagement one year before the marriage can occur. He claims a few broken romances would prevent many broken families. He would also raise the marriagable age of men from 21 and of women to 22, and of women from 18 to 19. The record number of divorces granted to one person is not held by a cinema actor, but by a boardinghouse keeper in East St. Louis, Illinois. This women has obtained thirteen divorces and one annulment of a marriage. Some of the reasons given for. asking for divorce are fantastic. One man complained that his wife would not take his name, but insisted on using her own after marriage. |A woman alleged cruelty because her husband had not invited her to go to a motion picture show in two - years. Another woman alleged that her husband could no longer support her 1 because he neglected his business to work crossword puzzles. A third woman’s charge of “general indignities’’ was bolstered by evidence that her husband‘never complimented her on the good dinners she cooked. A woman who had supported her husband several years by working as a waitress in a restaurant sued for divorce, charging non-support. The court ruled that under English common law, which holds good in that State, the husband owned the wife’s services and earnings and therefore he had actually supported her during all those years when she had been the family bread-winner! Two cases have, been reported where women have been ordered to pay alimony to their husbands.