DIVORCE LAW AMENDMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 13 August 1907, Page 2

DIVORCE LAW AMENDMENT.

Per Press Association. Wellington, August 12. A deputation waited on the Premier to-day to urge the Amendment of the divorce law. it was'urged that a serious blemish was cast upon the reputation of the colony by the use that was made of the section of the Act which made failure to comply with an order for restitution of conjugal rights a ground for divorce.

Dr. Findlay explained that the Act of 1898 was tho lirst Act in which this section appeared, and there had been a certain amount of misapprehension as to its origin. la England under the Act of 1884 there was a provision that, where an order for restitution of conjugal rights had been made and disobeyed, it should be deemed to be equivalent to desertion without reasonable cause for the period required by the English Act—two years. When the draughtsman of the BUI of 1898 came to draw it, he embodied the section contained in the English Act, obviously not recognising that he was creating an entirely new ground of divorce. The Premier said the Government would submit legislation to remove what was admittedly a gross abUBS of the divorce laws.