rs. Such a man usually considers that his
proprietorship of the home and the family is not affected by his absence
or even by court orders, and when fortified by liquor he is likely to
force his entrance into the home and perhaps do harm. The protection of
the warrant is not absolute; in such cases as this it ought later to be
reinforced by a legal separation. Social workers avail themselves of
this resource far less than they should. It controverts the principles
of no religious sect and gives all the protection of absolute divorce
(including the payment of alimony) to the woman and children. To the
children it is likely to give more protection than divorce; for in the
event of 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