Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It marks the furthest point of the unity of domicile. Even a wife who had obtained a judicial separation could not acquire a domicile of her own — which is the answer to anybody who says the rule was tolerable because a wronged wife could go to court.
Facts
The wife had been judicially separated from her husband.
Held
Even a judicially separated wife could acquire no separate domicile.
Reasoning
Step one — dependence is a rule of law, not an inference. The wife's domicile followed the husband's because the law assigned it, not because the law supposed she lived with him.
Step two — separation changes the living arrangement, not the legal assignment. A decree that relieves the spouses of the duty to cohabit does not dissolve the marriage, and it is the marriage that the rule of dependence attaches to.
Step three — see the practical effect. Coupled with the domiciliary test of jurisdiction in Le Mesurier v. Le Mesurier, the rule meant that a separated or deserted wife had to pursue her husband to his domicile to get a decree that would be recognised.
Exam use
It opens: Criticise the doctrine of the unity of domicile. Open with Lord Advocate v. Jaffrey — a wife who had never left Scotland held domiciled in Queensland — and add this case to show that even the obvious escape was closed.
Then give the reform history in three moves. The judicial movement away from the domiciliary rule in the Indyka line of cases; the Recognition of Divorces and Legal Separations Act 1971, which recognises an overseas divorce if at the date of institution either spouse was habitually resident in that country or either spouse was a national of that country, subject to refusal where notice was not given or where recognition would manifestly be contrary to public policy; and the abolition of the unity of domicile by s. 1 of the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1973.
Then state the Indian position and its cost. Sections 15 and 16 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 preserve the older rule, with exceptions only for a wife living separately under a decree of court and for a husband undergoing a life sentence — and Prem Pratap v. Jagat Pratap applies it, holding that a German wife married to a domiciled Indian could not say her pre-marriage domicile revived when he abandoned her.
It does not decide anything that remains English law; the 1973 Act ended it.