ABSTRACT
Adultery was seldom considered grounds for divorce, nor was it regarded as a reason for terminating conjugal life. An adulterer had to pay compensation to the husband. The legal institution of polygyny, as well as the husband's legally and socially acknowledged right to extramarital liaisons, afford him opportunities for satisfying his aesthetic feelings. There is always a possibility that a divorced woman will remarry, even at an advanced age; in fact marriage, divorce, and remarriage are regarded as customary stages in a normal life-cycle. A husband's incapacity to beget children is grounds for divorce. Bestiality, sodomy, or the insistence on any abnormal form of sexual intercourse is held to be grounds for divorce. The maintenance of a divorced wife (nshimbe) is a charge on her relatives and never upon her husband and his family. The father has the right to renounce possession of his children, in which case he can demand return of bridewealth in full.
