Married Women's Maintenance
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835101500110 |
| Published date | 01 January 1951 |
| Date | 01 January 1951 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Married Women's Maintenance
THE maintenace of married women living
apart
from
their husbands is often
the
concern of criminal courts,
especially of magistrates' courts. Consequently
any
in-
crease in
the
amounts
that
can be awarded
by
courts of
summary jurisdiction, is of interest to
the
lawyers who
practice in these courts.
On
the
15th December 1949
the
largest sum
that
a
bench of magistrates could award for
the
maintenance of a
deserted wife was £2 a week.
It
is astonishing
that
this
remained
the
maximum for over fifty years,
and
older
readers
may
wonder whether
the
£5 which a court
can
award since 16th December 1949
can
buy
as much as £2
did on 1st
January
1896,
the
date
when
the
1895 Act came
into force. The writer remembers abook published in
the
nineties,
and
which his mother
kept
in her kitchen,
called:
"How to live well on five shillings a week".
It
stands to reason therefore
that
the
Married Women
(Maintenance) Act 1949 fulfils a long-standing
want
and
will be popular
not
only with
the
married women con-
cerned
and
their lawyers,
butwith
magistrates
and
their
clerks, although some clerks
may
view with dismay section
4, which imposes further duties upon
them
in connection
with their court collection duties.
By section 1
the
maximum amounts which a court can
order for
the
payment
of a wife
and
children are £5
and
30s.
respectively,
and any
existing order
can
be varied up to
these maxima. Section 2 is consequential upon s. 1
and
applies certain provisions of
the
Finance Act 1944 to these
orders.
It
will be remembered
that
by
s. 25 of
that
Act,
the
duty
of
the
court collection officer is to
pay
the
sums
ordered to
the
woman without deduction of
tax;
the
section
mentions
the
sums of £2
and
lOs.
and
consequently, as far
as orders under
the
new Act are concerned,
the
1944 Act
has
been amended.
Section 2will be found useful in certain cases.
It
provides acontinuation of payments in respect of children
108
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