the divorced husband’s remarriage the children of the second wife have prior rights over those of the first, and legal separation makes this impossible by preventing the remarriage of either party.  Proceedings for a legal separation cannot usually be started if a man is on probation, but may be while he is undergoing imprisonment.  It should be said that, after a separation, claims for non-payment of alimony cannot, in many states, be pressed in a court of domestic relations but must go to a civil court.  This is usually more expensive and less satisfactory.[34]

Some social workers even advance the heretical doctrine that support secured through the court from a cruel and dangerous husband does not make up for the harm he may do and the anxiety he causes.  If to force him into periodical payments means that he will be continually excited into seeking out and “beating up” his offending wife, the support she is able to extort from him comes high.  It is sometimes necessary to move a family to new quarters and actually help them to hide from the pursuit of one of these insistent gentry.  Even if we have some doubt that the wife’s protestations of fear or aversion are genuine, we should hardly take the risk of revealing her address if she wishes it kept secret.  This precaution applies not only to the man but to anyone whom we suspect of being interested on his behalf.  A district secretary continued to refuse the address of his family to a dangerous epileptic deserter who threatened the secretary’s life and, in the opinion of physicians who examined him, was likely to carry out his threat.

The committee on difficult cases in a family social agency voted to refuse to accept voluntary payments from a thoroughly worthless deserter and transmit them to his wife whose address he was seeking to learn, on the theory that it was better for her and her children to be entirely quit of him, and that nothing would make him realize the finality of the decision more than to refuse his money.  The agency, it was felt, would be in better position to protect the wife and children if it refused to act as post office for the man.

The same consideration might apply in questions of extradition.  When the whereabouts of a deserter of this type has been discovered in another city a safe distance away, it may be wiser to sacrifice the money he might be forced to contribute than to have him brought within arm’s length of his wife and family.

A prime difficulty in dealing with the undesirable husband who is willing to come home is often the attitude of the wife.  Some of the causes at work when a woman takes her husband back have been discussed earlier.[35] Unfortunately, hopelessly bad husbands profit by them as well as hopeful ones.  The policy of niggardly relief to a deserted wife has undoubtedly been responsible for many of these unfortunate attempts to patch up a life together.  “She was worn down by her efforts to keep the household going, and,