JUDGMENT
1. This is a hopeless appeal. We can only hope that the parties, in spite of the miserable charges that they have made against one another, will take the learned Judges’ advice. There is one respect in which the learned Judge, it is perhaps well to mention, has departed from the ordinary rule. There is no cross-objection and, therefore, we cannot alter his order, but he should have realised that the regular rule, to which there is practically no exception, is, that even although a wife’s detence fails, or her counter-charges break down, or she has been proved guilty of adultery, the husband has to pay her costs. This was not a
case in which the Judge should have ordered each party to pay their own costs. The policy of the Matrimonial Law in England and it is the same among the Christians in India, has always demanded that the husband shall be responsible for his wife’s costs. Indeed, the usual practice in every husband’s petition is to require him to deposit a sum for the wife’s costs before the petition is allowed to proceed. The reason for that is obvious. The husband has the control of the purse-strings and it may often happen, if he is not ordered to provide security for the wife’s costs, that he may secure a decree in an undefended case, because the wife had no, money to defend her honour. The appeal must be dismissed with costs including fees on the higher scale.
