by MICHELLE DUFF, DomPost, 18 July 2011
A terminal cancer patient has given up on a legal system that wouldn't let his wife – British author Marina Lewycka (right) – gain New Zealand residency, and now won't allow him to divorce her. Whanganui man Dave Feickert has laid an official complaint with Justice Minister Simon Power over the "callous and unsympathetic" way he says he has been treated in his attempts to divorce Lewycka, the prizewinning author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and Two Caravans.
The pair filed for divorce in February after it became apparent their long-distance relationship was not going to work. They have been married since 1987 and have a 32-year-old daughter, Sonia, but Lewycka was denied residency in 2009, partly because she had not spent enough time in this country to satisfy immigration laws.
Because of her promotional obligations as an author and Mr Feickert's job as an international coalmine safety adviser, the couple were rarely in New Zealand at the same time for a long period.
Now Mr Feickert, who has been fighting liver cancer for six years, says the same authorities are denying the pair a divorce, despite both he and his wife signing an affidavit saying they have not been living together.
Under law, citing irreconcilable differences is the only ground for legally dissolving a marriage or civil union, and the only way of proving this is by living apart for two years.
After months of providing supporting letters, talking to lawyers and struggling against "senseless bureaucracy", they have been forced to find Kiwi lawyers in their respective countries to sign further declarations that they haven't been intimate since February 2008, Mr Feickert says.
"The great irony, of course, is now in fact the court requires us to prove that we are living apart.
"It's like living in a world of bureaucratic rules and you can't figure out who has made them, who is enforcing them and exactly why they're doing it."
Full piece at stuff.co.nz
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