Matrimonial Property Law in Quebec The Swedish Marriage Act Reading: The Danger of Alimony Reading: Role of the Church

Emily Murphy, "Article III: About Marriage Settlements," ms. Courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives.

"The proper time to stay alimony and divorce is before marriage—not after. This is very desirable and may be furthered definitely by the enactment of just and equitable laws.

In this respect, Mother Church is quite as much concerned as the State but, unfortunately, she has never been an exponent of equality in marriage so that it is to the State we must look for assuagement and cure.

Although the Church may comfort and support the members of a broken family in their period of distress, usually she fails to tackle the actual causes. In this, the Church may be said—albeit with respect—to have adopted the Feminist attitude rather than that of the Suffragist. . . . Now, the Feminist wishes to alter the conventions: the Suffragist wishes to alter the law.

Instead of looking through a glass darkly, if the Church would be pleased to take a keener cognizance of the changed and difficult conditions of recent times, much of the trouble would be obviated—truly, it would. To make this assertion is to undoubtedly invite hostility but, maybe, the suggestion is worthy of at least a casual consideration in view of the fact that on this continent we are rapidly approaching a marriageless age. As a contract, sacrament, or whatever else you may wish to call it, matrimony today, is steadily drifting to disintegration."