DIVORCE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

11.04 a.m.

The Attorney-General (Mr C. H. Butterfield): Mr Speaker, Sir, I move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, the main purpose of this Bill is to amend the section of the Divorce Ordinance which prescribes the grounds on which a petition for divorce may be presented to the court. I think, Sir, that Members of this Assembly will have seen from the first paragraph of the Explanatory Note which is appended to the copy of the Bill which is in their hands that at the present time, one of the grounds on which a party to a marriage may institute proceedings for divorce is that the other party to the marriage is incurably of unsound mind and has been continuously under care and treatment for a period of at least five years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition. This care and treatment, Sir, must, under the existing law, be within the jurisdiction - it must be within the Colony - and it is clear, therefore, that hardship may occur where a party to a marriage is under care and treatment outside the jurisdiction. The Government accordingly considers it desirable that the Divorce Ordinance should be amended so that cases of hardship of this kind may be avoided. Accordingly, Sir, clause 2 of the Bill is designed to allow divorce proceedings to be instituted in Singapore where a party to a marriage is undergoing care and treatment in a country outside the Colony, provided that the court is satisfied that he is receiving care and treatment according to standards which are substantially the same as those obtaining in respect of the care and treatment of patients suffering from mental illness in the Colony.

I think, Sir, that Members will have observed from the second paragraph of the Explanatory Note that the form of amendment which is now proposed follows the principle of the amendment recently recommended in England by the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, where the law on this point corresponds to the law in Singapore.

There is, I think, Sir, only one other point to which I should refer in moving this Second Reading, and that is the quite separate amendment which is proposed by clause 3. That amendment restores the word "nisi" in the section of the Ordinance empowering the court to pronounce a decree of dissolution of marriage. That word was omitted when the 1936 Edition was amended in 1941 and was not restored when the 1955 Edition - the present Revised Edition - was prepared.

I think there is nothing useful which I can add to what I have said, Sir, and accordingly I now beg to move that this Bill be read a Second time.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.