I had had no idea that my good friend James Turner had had such an -?- interesting family history! Mind you, I play with fire given what a long lost aunt has quite recently told me some long hidden and truly scandalous secrets about my own family on both parental and maternal sides. For me undefended divorces usually at the Chester Assizes were an enjoyable jaunt in otherwise rather dour articles in Crewe near my home. After all for the first two and a half years of those articles I was paid nothing and then following my passing of the then Part Ones I was paid just £10 per week out of the £250 premium my father paid in 1962 values. At no or virtually no salary no one tended to miss me for the day. Sorry-all very self indulgent.
English divorce law and practice has always been shrouded in hypocrisy.
In the days of divorce by private Act the petitioner - always except in four instances the husband - had first to get a decree a mensa et thoro, more a less a decree of judicial separation, from the consistory (Church of England) court and a judgement for "criminal conversation" (adultery, although it wasn't criminal and might or might not involve conversation) in the Court of King's or Queen's Bench - against the man concerned, although whether the judgment was paid was not disclosed. After 1858 and until 1922 the same charade was required if the husband was domiciled in Ireland.
in the course of getting the ecclesiastical divorce the husband was required to swear an affidavit - on oath and in a church court - that he did not intend to seek a divorce through the Parliamentary process!
That was hypocrisy for the classes. The nearest equivalent for the masses was that the Overseers of the Poor would not pay the fees of the clergyman to marry a pauper couple unless and until the woman was pregnant - or willing to say she was.
There was, of course, a famous (possibly apocryphal) story of the judge who refused a “chambermaid divorce” on the ground that there was no evidence that anyone had brought the adulterous couple a cup of tea in bed in the morning, which he regarded as an indispensable part of the whole [charade].
One of the many divorces in my own family was one of the last chambermaid divorces heard. The chambermaid was shown a photograph of the co-respondent and asked if this was the man who had signed in with the soon-to-be-divorced Mrs T. “It doesn’t look like him”, came the response – yielding something of a Bateman moment, or so family legend has it. Anyway, she refreshed her memory and justice took its course.
My grandfather achieved legal distinction of sorts as the first silk to take a brief in an undefended divorce – but plainly things could go wrong, so perhaps leading counsel was required.
I might have compared this case with the appeal being heard by the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday. The court is being asked when non-matrimonial property becomes matrimonial property in the context of financial remedy proceedings and how the sharing principle should be applied to such property. https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0089
A wonderful article - thank you. Of course, as you know, this was covered in the seminal judgment of Wool J in Pale v Pale & Hume as reported to A P Herbert in ‘Uncommon Law’. Viscount Buckmaster noted in his forward to that book, that it was one of the more solemn mock judgments contained within it, but the humanity really shines through the closely argued and beautifully expressed ‘judgment’ and the solution within it is a (fittingly?) seductive one
Thank you! It's a long time since I read that. But I do remember spotting AP Herbert walking to his home in Hammersmith while I was heading home from school.
I had had no idea that my good friend James Turner had had such an -?- interesting family history! Mind you, I play with fire given what a long lost aunt has quite recently told me some long hidden and truly scandalous secrets about my own family on both parental and maternal sides. For me undefended divorces usually at the Chester Assizes were an enjoyable jaunt in otherwise rather dour articles in Crewe near my home. After all for the first two and a half years of those articles I was paid nothing and then following my passing of the then Part Ones I was paid just £10 per week out of the £250 premium my father paid in 1962 values. At no or virtually no salary no one tended to miss me for the day. Sorry-all very self indulgent.
Something I forgot, arising out of the Standish case. Some years ago there was a case in Oklahoma in which an ex-wife was awarded $580m.
She appealed asking for $640m.
She lost - with costs I think - leaving the rest of to wonder what difference to her life that $60m would have made!
English divorce law and practice has always been shrouded in hypocrisy.
In the days of divorce by private Act the petitioner - always except in four instances the husband - had first to get a decree a mensa et thoro, more a less a decree of judicial separation, from the consistory (Church of England) court and a judgement for "criminal conversation" (adultery, although it wasn't criminal and might or might not involve conversation) in the Court of King's or Queen's Bench - against the man concerned, although whether the judgment was paid was not disclosed. After 1858 and until 1922 the same charade was required if the husband was domiciled in Ireland.
in the course of getting the ecclesiastical divorce the husband was required to swear an affidavit - on oath and in a church court - that he did not intend to seek a divorce through the Parliamentary process!
That was hypocrisy for the classes. The nearest equivalent for the masses was that the Overseers of the Poor would not pay the fees of the clergyman to marry a pauper couple unless and until the woman was pregnant - or willing to say she was.
There was, of course, a famous (possibly apocryphal) story of the judge who refused a “chambermaid divorce” on the ground that there was no evidence that anyone had brought the adulterous couple a cup of tea in bed in the morning, which he regarded as an indispensable part of the whole [charade].
One of the many divorces in my own family was one of the last chambermaid divorces heard. The chambermaid was shown a photograph of the co-respondent and asked if this was the man who had signed in with the soon-to-be-divorced Mrs T. “It doesn’t look like him”, came the response – yielding something of a Bateman moment, or so family legend has it. Anyway, she refreshed her memory and justice took its course.
My grandfather achieved legal distinction of sorts as the first silk to take a brief in an undefended divorce – but plainly things could go wrong, so perhaps leading counsel was required.
Thanks so much for these comments.
I might have compared this case with the appeal being heard by the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday. The court is being asked when non-matrimonial property becomes matrimonial property in the context of financial remedy proceedings and how the sharing principle should be applied to such property. https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0089
A wonderful article - thank you. Of course, as you know, this was covered in the seminal judgment of Wool J in Pale v Pale & Hume as reported to A P Herbert in ‘Uncommon Law’. Viscount Buckmaster noted in his forward to that book, that it was one of the more solemn mock judgments contained within it, but the humanity really shines through the closely argued and beautifully expressed ‘judgment’ and the solution within it is a (fittingly?) seductive one
Thank you! It's a long time since I read that. But I do remember spotting AP Herbert walking to his home in Hammersmith while I was heading home from school.