DIVORCE DAMAGES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 916, 8 March 1930, Page 28

DIVORCE DAMAGES

■SYSTEM AMAZES FOREIGNERS CURIOUS ANOMALIES | Truly, says the foreigner, these Bri- ; tish are a nation of shopkeepers. Why, ; | then even put a price upon their j wives, and claim that he who steals j a wife must pay for the chattel he j ! takes. Awarding of damages against a co- j j respondent in a divorce suit —the prac--1 tice against which an English judge | protested recently—is peculiar to j I Anglo-Saxon countries, and foreigners ’ ! cannot understand how the English law allows it (says a Sydney ex- | change). But then, of course, the : normal Anglo-Saxon does not under- | stand the foreigner's recourse—knife I or gun, and a subsequent appeal to j | the unwritten law. i Principles governing this vexed ; 1 question of damages for the seduction ; j of a wife, whether you agree with j them or not. are simple, in the fore- j front is the rule that damages are by i way of compensation, and are not to be assessed as a punishment for the interloper. Next is the rule that the wealth of the co-respondent must not be a factor. That is the theory. In j actual practice many a jury has dis- ; regarded both principles. Vindictive husbands —men who have used the witness-box of the Divorce Court to vilify their wives—have crashed badly in the matter of damages. “Petitioner himself has told you that his wife neglected the home, and generally was a bad lot, so that perhaps you may not think the loss he has suffered is a great one,” New South Wales judges in divorce have told juries in such instances. Damages, by the way, do not pass necessarily to the wronged husband. The court may order, and often does so order, that a large portion be set aside for the children. Even at times some portion has been allocated to the sinning wife. Two curiosities in the divorce law stand out. If the co-respondent does not appear in a suit in which damages are claimed, the jury must award damages against him even if the wife is cleared of the adultery charge. By his failure to play his allotted part in the action, the co-respondent has in effect admitted his guilt. The other point is that, unless already paid into court, damages awarded cannot be recovered if the co-respondent dies. In at least one Sydney suit, death cheated the husband in this way. Friends of the co-respondent even suggested at the time that he met death more than halfway—as a means of having the last laugh on the husband. Grim humour that —far too grim for us ordinary mortals!