National Assistance and The Liability To Maintain One's Family
| Date | 01 March 1955 |
| Author | L. Neville Brown |
| Published date | 01 March 1955 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1955.tb00286.x |
NATIONAL ASSISTANCE AND THE
LIABILITY TO MAINTAIN ONE’S FAMILY
TH~T
the
poor
are with us always remains
a
truism even in these
days of the Welfare State, although the presence of poverty may be
disguised by substituting the euphemikm
“
national assistance
for the plain language of
cc
poor
relief.” The remedial treatment
of this social malady has a long and varied history which for too long
has remained the almost exclusive study
of
the social, rather than
the legal historian.2
It
is interesting, therefore, to fmd in National
Assistance Board
v.
Wilkinson the present Lord Chief Justice
devoting
a
considerable part of
his
judgment to tracing the ancestry
of sections
42
and
48
of the National Assistance Act,
1948,
which
are concerned with the liability of members of a family to maintain
one another.
In
this short article
it
is proposed to recall the facts
of that important case, to examine and expand the historical survey
of the learned Lord Chief Justice, and to indicate some of the wider
aspects of the liability imposed by the Act of
1948.
THE
FACTS
AND
DECISION
IN
NATIONAL ASSISTANCE
BOARD
2).
WILKINSON
A
special case was stated by the Durham justices
on
the inter-
pretation
of
sections
42
and
48
of the Act of
1948.
Section
42
(1)
states:
“
For
the purposes of this Act-(a) a man shall be liable to
maintain his wife and his children,‘ and
(b)
a woman shall be liable
to maintain her husband and her children.”
(1)
Where assistance
is
given
or
applied for by reference
to the requirements
of
any person
.
.
.
the Board may make
a
complaint to the court against any other person who for the
purposes of this Act is liable to maintain the
person
assisted.
cc
(2)
On
a complaint under this section the court shall have
regard to all the circumstances and in particular to the resources
of the defendant, and may order the defendant to pay such sum,
weekly
or
otherwise, as the court may consider appropriate.”
1 In like manner the French, despite their
penchant
for plain speaking,
now
refer officially to the poor
as
Zes dconomiquement faibles.
a
Studies
of
the poor
law
by social historians include: Leonard,
Early
Histor
of English
Poor
Relief
(1900);
Marshall,
The
Engiish
Poor
in
the
l8ti
Century
(1926)
;
S.
and B. Webb,
English Poor Law History
(1929)
:
Hampson,
The Treatment
of
Pooerty in Cambridgeshire,
1597-1834; Levy,
*’
The
Economic History
r),f
Sickness
and
Medical Benefit before and since the
Puritan Revolution
(Economic History Review,
Vol.
XIII,
pp. 42-57
;
Vol. XIV. pp. 136-60)
;
Tate,
Parish Chest
(1951) pp. 187-239.
J
[1952] 2
Q.B.
648.
4
Children include, in the case
of
a
man, children of
whom
he is adjudged
the putative father, and, in the case
of
a
woman,
her illegitimate children:
8. 42 (2). The term is limited,
by
8.
64 (l), to those under the age of
sixteen years.
Section
43
states
:
110
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