EXTRAVAGANT WIFE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 6

EXTRAVAGANT WIFE

HUSBAND'S RIGHT TO LEAVE HER IF INCOME IMPERILLED Extravagance by a wife is, in certain circumstances, an admissible answer in law to her petition for a decree of restitution of conjugal rights. This is Mr. Justice Hill’s answer, given in the Divorce Court in England, to the problem set to him in an action in which the identity of the parties was kept secret.

Mr. Justice Hill in his judgment said that the parties were married in 1912 in Calcutta. Their place of residence was Calcutta, and the husband was a merchant. A child was born in 1916. The wife in the petition stated that in 1921 she returned to England with the child, her husband remaining in India owing to business. Last April the husband returned to England on leave, and the same month withdrew from cohabitation and refused, and still refused, to return to her. She further stated that, she asked him to allow her to return with him to India when his leave ended. He said he had. no intention of taking her to India and would not live with her again. The withdrawal from cohabitation during the husband’s leave could be important as part of a general refusal of cohabitation, but the court did not grant a decree of restitution of conjugal rights merely because a husband spent a holiday away from his wife.

The husband, who was compelled to live in Calcutta, refused to have his wife live in India; with him and instead offered to maintain her elsewhere. He said that his: wife, by persistent extravagance over a number of years, had greatly exceeded the allowance of £2,400 a year made to her, and had incurred many debts. He had paid off £IO,OOO in 1920, 1925 and 1927, and in 1928 she incurred further debts totalling about £7,000. She had borrowed from money lenders; she had issued many cheques which had been dishonoured; she had tried to borrow from his friends.

She had brought things to such a pass that his partners had said that if he took his wife to India to live with him he must leave his firm. If these facts were true the husband would show reasonable l cause for refusing to have his wife to live with him in India. The reasons would be “grave and weighty.” It would be contrary to the real truth of the case to treat as deserting his wife a husband who, in these circumstances, refused to have his wife with him in India, and instead maintained her elsewhere. The husband was bound to maintain his wife and child, whatever part of the world he lived in. Therefore, he was bound to earn a living. Corelatively it was for him to choose now and where he should earn his living. If his choice was genuine and not merely a device to avoid living with his wife, he (Mr. Justice Hill) knew not on what grounds it could be said to be a breach of duty toward the wife. If a woman married a man whose duties compelled him to work out of England, she impliedly agreed that he should not be compelled to live with her in England. To say that the particulars if proyed disclosed good cause for the husband’s refusal was not to say there would always be good cause. Circumstances might change. All that he decided was upon the present claim of the wife to a decree in the existing circumstances. The answer, if proved, would establish a defence in law. His Lordship dismissed the summons.