ABLE TO FLOUT LAW

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 633, 9 April 1929, Page 9

ABLE TO FLOUT LAW

LIFE-SENTENCE MAN CANNOT PAY DIVORCE COSTS Vagaries of the law I How can a life-sentence man pay the costs of a divorce suit? Like Shylock, the law demands its full pound of flesh —a fact exemplified in the Divorce Court in Sydney last week. William Henry Conwell Rothery, a farmer, is serving a life sentence in Goulburn Gaol, for having, in 1925, administered poison to Frederick Charles Rothery, at Bowen Park, near Cudal, New South "Wales. The Judge in Divorce, Mr. Justice Owen, toward the end of last week granted Rothery’s young wife a divorce on the ground that her husband had been confined in prison for three years under a death-commuted sentence, for a capital crime. In granting Mrs. Rothery a decree nisi, the judge added: “And the respondent (Rothery) must pay the costs.” Lawyers are now asking, “How can an order for costs be enforced against a ‘lifer*?’’ Were the costs unpaid Rothery could be attached for contempt for disodedience of the order of the court. The punishment provided is imprisonment till such contempt is purged. Rothery. however, is “booked up” for life in gaol, and, therefore, of course, it cannot be increased. Hence, Rothery is one of the few who can flout an order for divorce costs with impunity.