§ (The Lord Chancellor.)
THE LORD CHANCELLORI now, my Lords, move the second reading of this Bill. Its first clause proposes to give the Judge power to make an order on the husband for weekly or monthly payment to the wife. Many of the suitors in the Divorce Court are comparatively poor; and as the power the Bill proposes to give is similar to that held by magistrates in reference to certain cases which come before them, I can see no possible objection to the introduction of the clause. The next clause makes provision for extraordinary cases which occasionally arise. Sometimes, when a man brings an action for divorce on the ground of adultery, it is met on the part of the wife by a cross suit charging cruelty. The man may not succeed in proving adultery; but the woman, although she may succeed in making out a case of cruelty, cannot get relief. In the Old Ecclesiastical Court of procedure one suit determined the whole. The second clause meets this defect and enables the court on the hearing of the cause to give to the respondent the same relief to which she would have been entitled in case she had filed a petition seeking such relief. The last clause is simply a technical one, but at the same time it is necessary, and will be followed with useful results. The law at present permits a decree to be made absolute three months after the decree nisi has been obtained. I have been assured that if six months were fixed as the minimum time which should be allowed to elapse between the making of a decree nisi and a decree absolute the result would be 1494 far more satisfactory. It is felt that three months is not a sufficient time to allow for the possible coming to light of all the facts bearing upon a case, and the clause therefore enacts that no decree nisi shall become absolute till after six months.
§ Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.