Divorce Granted Wife of F. M. B. Fisher

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 363, 25 May 1928, Page 1

Divorce Granted Wife of F. M. B. Fisher

FORMER N.Z. MINISTER COSTS ON HIGHEST SCALE Pres 3 AssociaTton. CHRISTCHURCH. To-day. In the Supreme Court Francis Marion Bates Fisher, a former New Zealand Cabinet Minister, petitioned for divorce from his wife, Esther Alice Fisher, on the ground of mutual agreement to separate. Mrs. Fisher cross-petitioned on the same grounds and obtained a decree nisi, to be made absolute after three months, the husband to pay the wife’s costs on the highest scale. The payment of the costs of the hearing of considerable evidence be-

fore a commission in England was left to an agreement between the parties. The husband did not proceed on his petition and his counsel offered, no objection to the cross-petition. Mr. A. T. Donnelly, for Mrs. Fisher, said that Mr. Fisher was now a financial adventurer without a definite profession or occupation. “He was at one stage the youngest Cabinet Minister in New Zealand,” he said, “and was apparently peeved at his defeat in the 1914 election. He then went to England and performed valuable service during the war. Mrs. Fisher was always unwilling to let her husband divorce her and eventually decided to take proceedings herself.” Later counsel stressed that he did not use the term “financial adventurer” in any offensive sense, except to mean that Fisher was willing to go anywhere where there was a field for his talent. Mr. F. M. B. Fisher was Minister of Trade and Customs from 1912 to 1915. He is the son of the late Mr. George Fisher, M.H.R. In 1913 he negotiated the Reciprocal Trade Treaty with Australia. He represented Wellington City in the House of Representatives from 1905 to 1911, and was a member of the Wellington City Council in 19QX v