DIVORCE SUIT OPPOSED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3570, 4 September 1920, Page 5

DIVORCE SUIT OPPOSED.

MISCONDUCT NOT DENTED. RESPONDENT CONTENDS ACT WAS CONDONED. WELLINGON, Sept. 3. A petition for dissolution of marriage in which the petitioner was the well-known “All-Black” Rugby footballer, Ernest Arthur Beilis, of Taihape (Mr O. R. Beere), was opposed by respondent, Vivienne Doris Beilis (Mr J. Scott), before His Honour Sir Bassett Edwards, at the Supreme Court yesterday, on the ground that the gravamen of the suit—her misconduct with William Kellar Bourke, ot Wellington, driver —had been condoned by Beilis. * The petitoiner, on oath, said that he was married to the respondent on January 13th, 1916, at Wellington, and that she gave birth to a child to him five months later, or three months after he had left New Zealand for the front. The first he heard of any wrong-doing on her part was in 1918, when he received information that his Lather had stopped her allowance. Later he heard that she had given birth to an illegitimate child. Deponent next saw his wife upon his return from active service, in October, 1919, but he did not take her to live with him, with fhe result that he did not again see her until June 1920, when she ” commenced maintenance proceedings against, him. He then journeyed to Wellington from Taihape and agreed to keep her, hut refused a request to live with her. Whilst he was with the "All Black” team at Auckland, shortly before the commencement of the trip to Australia, he received a note from the respondent in which she asked to see him, and threatened to have him arrested, and so stopped from going to Australia.

When T returned she met me, and asked me to see her in the afternoon of the same day. and I told her that likely I would. I did not meet her, and have not seen her since until today.

Cross-examined by Mr Scott, Beilis admitted that, although he returned in 1919. he did not commence proceedings for divorce until after the respondent had claimed maintenance, in June. 1920. In May last he |pld Mrs, Beilis and her mother that he would let them know if he would live with respondent again, but he did not say that for the sake oT their boy. to whom he was attached, he would let bygones be bygones. He did not tell the respondent that he would not again live wifh her. The witness said that he had just as much to do with the proceedings for the divorce as his father.

The respondent deposed that in June last the petitioner told her that family pressure had been brought to hear on him to proceed with the acUon for divorce, but that he had decided to discontinue the proceedings and take her hack as his wife. Subsequently they had cohabited. His Honour said the position was extraordinary so far as condonation was concerned. Mr Scott asked that the petition be dismissedCounsel for petitioner argued that condonation was a subject of fact, not of law. The act which, it was alleged, constituted condonation could not in the slightest cTegree be construed in that way. At this stage the action was adjourned for argument at a later date.