DIVORCE dends on the shares of a few American railroad companies are occasionally made payable either in cash or in new shares of the company at the proprietor’s option. Most companies divide their capital into at least two classes, called “preference” shares and “ordinary” shares, of which the former are entitled out of the profits of the company to a preferential dividend at a fixed rate, and the latter to whatever remains after payment of the preferential dividend and any fixed charges. Before, however, a dividend is paid, a part of the profits is often carried to a “reserve fund.” The dividend on preference shares is either “ cumulative ” or contingent on the profits of each separate year or half-year. When cumulative, if the profits of any one year are insufficient to pay it in full, the deficiency has to be made good out of subsequent profits. A cumulative preferential dividend is sometimes said to be “guaranteed,” and preferential dividends payable by all companies registered under the Companies Acts, 1862 to 1900, are cumulative unless stipulated to be otherwise. Certain public companies are forbidden by Parliament to pay dividends in excess of a prescribed maximum rate, but this restriction has been happily modified in some instances, notably in the case of gas companies, by the institution of a sliding scale, under which a gas company may so regulate the price of gas to be charged to consumers that any reduction of an authorized standard price entitles the company to make a proportionate increase of the authorized dividend, and any increase above the standard price involves a proportionate decrease of dividend. Dividends are usually declared yearly or half-yearly; and before any dividend can be paid it is, as a rule, necessary for the directors to submit to the shareholders, at a general meeting called for the purpose, the accounts of the company, with a report by the directors on its position and their recommendation as to the rate of
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the proposed dividend. The articles of association of a company usually provide that the shareholders may accept the directors’ recommendation as to dividend or may declare a lower one, but may not declare a higher one than the directors recommend. Directors frequently have power to pay on account of the dividend for the year, without consulting the shareholders, an “ interim dividend,” which on ordinary shares is generally at a much lower rate than the final or regular dividend. An exceptionally high dividend is often distributed in the shape of a dividend at the usual rate supplemented by an additional dividend or “ bonus.” Payment of dividends is made by means of cheques sent by post, called “ dividend warrants.” All dividends are subject to income-tax, and by most companies dividends are paid “ less income-tax,” in which case the tax is deducted from the amount of dividend payable to each proprietor. When paid without such deduction a dividend is said to be “ free of incometax.” In the latter case, however, the company has to make provision for payment of the tax before declaring the dividend, and the amount of its divisible profits' and the rate of dividend which it is able to declare are consequently to that extent reduced. In respect of consols and certain other securities, holders of amounts of less than ,£1000 may instruct the Bank of England or Bank of Ireland to receive and invest their dividends. With few exceptions, the prices of securities dealt in on the Stock Exchange include any accruing dividend not paid up to the date of purchase. As soon as a price ceases to include any accruing dividend, it is marked “ ex dividend ” or “ x.d.” The expression “ cum dividend ” is used to signify that the price of the security dealt in includes a dividend which, in the absence of any stipulation, might be supposed to belong to the seller of the security. (s. D. H.)
DIYOECE. DIVORCE is the dissolution, in whole or in part, tof the tie of marriage. It includes both the complete abrogation of the marriage relation known as a divorce a vincido matrimonii, which carries with it a power on the part of both parties to the marriage to remarry other persons or each other, and also that incomplete severance not involving powers to remarry, which was formerly known as divorce a mensd et thoro, and has in England been termed “judicial separation.” Less strictly, divorce is commonly understood to include judicial declarations of nullity of marriage, which, while practically terminating the marriage relation, proceed in law on the basis of the marriage never having been legally established. The conditions under which, in different communities, divorce has at different times been permitted, vary with the aspects in which the relation of marriage has been regarded. When marriage has been deemed to be the acquisition by the husband of property in the wife, or when it has been regarded as a mere agreement between persons capable both to form and to dissolve that contract, we find that marriage has been dissoluble at the will of the husband, or by agreement of the husband and wife. Yet even in these cases the interest of the whole community in the purity of marriage relations, in the pecuniary bearings of this particular contract, and the condition of children, has led to the imposition of restrictions on, and the attachment of conditions to, the termination of the obligations consequent on a marriage legally contracted. But the main restrictions on liberty of divorce have arisen from the conception of marriage entertained by religions, and especially by one religion. Christianity has had no greater practical effect on the life
of mankind than in its belief that marriage is no mere civil contract, but a vow in the sight of God binding the parties by obligations of conscience above and beyond those of civil law. Translating this conception into practice, Christianity not only profoundly modified the legal conditions of divorce as formulated in the Roman civil law, but in its own canon law defined its own rule of divorce, going so far as in the Western (at least in its unreformed condition), though not the Eastern, branch of Christendom to forbid all complete divorces, that is to say, all dissolutions of marriage carrying with them the right to remarry. The Roman Law of Divorce before Justinian.—The history of divorce, therefore, practically begins with the law of Rome. It took its earliest colour from that conception of the patria potestas, or the power of the head of the family over its members, which enters so deeply into the jurisprudence of ancient Rome. The wife was transferred at marriage to the authority of her husband, in manus, and consequently became so far subject to him that he could, at his will, renounce his rule over her, and terminate his companionship, subject at least to an adjustment of the pecuniary rights which were disturbed by such action. So clearly was the power of the husband derived from that of the father, that for a long period a father, in the exercise of his potestas, could take his daughter from her husband against the wishes of both. It may be presumed that this power, anomalous as it appears, was not unexercised, as we find that a constitution of Antoninus Pius prohibited a father from disturbing a harmonious union, and Marcus Aurelius afterwards limited this prohibition by allowing the interference of a father for strong
