The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-22
JUSTICE BLACKMAR ENUNCIATES NEW
 DIVORCE PRINCIPLE
Cruelty and "Neglect" Charges Too Often Magnified For
 Purposes of Separation
Special to The Farmer.)

New York, March 22-"Differences due to incompatability of temper, dis regard of marital duties. neglect, even
 insult. must be endured by the life partners. They take each other for better or worse. When the conduct of one is such as to make it unsafe Or degrading for the other to live
 longer together tine court will decree
 such measure of separation as the case seems to require.
 "The cruel treatment which justifies separat tion is usually physical violence or such words or conduct as to out
 rage the feelings and humiliate and
 degrade.
 'If the wife is i'll and suffering from physical ailment it Is the duty of the
 husband to be more kind, forbs' airing and considerate. Conduct which could
 be called only unkind and thoughtless to wife in good health may be cruel to one who Is dl1.''
 These are the opinions of Supreme Court Justice Blackmar, voiced in the Supreme Court, Brooklyn, yesterday. Dispensing with the usual domestic relation standards of weights and measures employed by the courts, Jus tice Blackmar produced scales of his own judicial invention on which to apportion out justice in the suit of Mrs. Madeline J. Hobbs for separation from R. A. Mansfield Hobbs, a New York lawyer
 The material with which he had to deal was made up of the oft-heard charges and counter charges of cruel y and neglect These, he said, were too often magnified by the courts, and the result was too many hastily-brought separation suits. He advised-and in- ferred that all courts should advise that husbands and wives be more toll erant of life mates in whom the "worse" was discovered to exceed the .sbetter' in their makeups.
 The Hobbses live in a private house
 at 265 Union avenue. The husband is a lawyer with offices at 52 Wall street, Manhatta The couple were married June 30, 1903, when, Mrs. Hobbs says,
 she was little more than a girl. They were living in their country place at
 Freeport, L. l., last summer when
 Mrs Hobbs was stricken with partial paralysis, and her sister, Mrs. Irene Peterson, came to the house to nurse her. Concerning the situation that
 developed, Mrs. Hobbs says in her complaint:
 My husbands attentions and devo- ton to my sister, two years older than I myself, who is married and has two children, but who has not lived with her husband for over seven years, have been oren and scandalous, and have continued notwithstanding my repeated remonstrances.
 Hobbs and a dozen of his friends | furnished affidavlts, which made up an exhibit of more than one hundred pages Hobbs lays the blame on his mother -in-law, whom he described in | his affidavit as a "most dangerous l woman and @e hard to get along
 with"
 Hobbs charged to the account of his wife's state of mind the loss of pei dog, Swpies, to which Hobbs and his four-year-old daughter, Madeline, were devoted. While he was absent from 1 home. Hobbs alleged that Swipes, a
 pup of blooded stock. disappeared. In- uuiry developed. he said, that Mrs Hobbs had enthusiastically delivered | Swipes into the hands of the Freeport dog catcher.
 1 After Justice Blackmar had heard
 both sides he said there ought to be
 a. rule of ''give and take" between
 husbands and wives. The rule should
 be considered broken when one inf1icts
 upon the other physical violence o1
 such treatment as tends to degrade ol J make 1t unsafe for the ill-treated tc