TRIAL MARRIAGES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 310, 23 May 1913, Page 5

TRIAL MARRIAGES.

A "LAW" FOR GIP.LS UNDtEK EIGHTEEN. . New York, April 4. According to Justice Cohalan, of the Supreme Court of New York, trial marriage in this State is a legalised institution for girls under eighteen years of age.

In recent years judges have frequentlydwelt on the anomalous conditions which permit parents of boys and girls who have married in haste with the aid of a complaisant magistrate or clergyman to-' apply to the Courts for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds'that the contracting parties were under age at < the time of the ceremony. American girls are said to love a runaway match, and the excitement of climbing down" an unnecessary rope ladder or driving * motor x car to some town near by* and there '. rousing from his slumbers an official"" competent to pronounce them man and!' wife appeal irresistibly to many youth- * fill imaginations. The sequel to such' unions is not unusually an application to '' the Courts to annul the marriage; Even in cases in which the parents gave their ' consent the Courts have'no recourse but' : to grant the desired annulment. Such, at all events, was the decision',' of Justice Cohalan, who yesterday heard 1 a suit to annul the marriage of Mrs Eva Mundell Coster, ,an actress* in the ' Drurv Lane drama, "The Whip," with Mr. Norman B, Coster, an official in theemploy of the Mercantile Safe Deposit Com pan y. « In effect) „ sajd .£ the present lawyn ,\ew York State permits a girl who marries under the age . of eighteen, with the' consent of her par- " ents, and leaves her husband before she ' attains that age, to come into Court and as a matter of course, obtain a decree •■" of annulment. This is to all intents and purposes providing: in such cases for trial marriages. The remedy for this state of things lies with the Legislature and not the Courts." Justice Cohalan found that Mrs. Costers mother consented to the marriage but the evidence of her father and the doctor who attended at her birth M . " tabhshed conclusively that the bride was exactly seventeen when she martherefore, entitled to demand an annulment of -.the marriage.—Daily Mail.