USED HUSBAND’S CREDIT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 925, 19 March 1930, Page 16

USED HUSBAND’S CREDIT

WIFE WHO LIVED APART FROM HIM MAGISTRATE DENIES RIGHT From Our Resident Reporter WELLINGTON, Today. i In delivering a judgment in the MagJ istrate’s Court yesterday, Mr. E. Page, . S.M., decided that a woman living . apart from her husband, with or with- . out his consent, but with an adequate allowance, has no legal authority to t pledge his credit. r This decision was given in a case in 3 which C. E. Wise claimed from Chris--3 tian Jensen £lO6 16s as hospital fees i incurred by his wife while she was 3 being nursed in plaintiff’s rest home. > “Where husband and wife are living 1 together the wife is presumed to have > authority to pledge his credit for neces- . saries suitable to their style of living,” > said Mr. Page. “A mere temporary abj sence from the marital home would l not. I think, destroy the authority. j “Here, however, the wife had left . her husband for a year before inj curring this debt, and she had evinced ; no intention of returning to him. He had for several months made efforts > to get her to return and, these having failed, he had allotted her an allow- \ ance as a permanent provision during J their separation. 1 “In the present case, assuming that . it were held that the defendant's wife 1 was living apart with his consent, I consider that, having regard to his } means and position, the financial provision made for her was adequate and she had therefore no authority to pledge his credit. For this reason the claim must fail. “There are, I think, other grounds equally fatal to the plaintiff’s claim. In order that a husband should be liable for a debt incurred by his wife, it must appear that it was his credit that was pledged, not her own. No evidence has been called to prove this. A further ground has reference to the extent to which a husband can in any event be held liable. The presumed authority to pledge his credit is confined to necessaries suitable to the husband’s style of living. I do not think that a prolonged stay in a nursing home at £ 6 6s a week when other facilities (for example, the public hospital), at a cost more within the compass of the defendant’s income, were available, can be held to have been a necessary.”