Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

Enoch Arden law

A statute that grants a divorce or an exemption from liability so that a person can remarry when his or her spouse has been absent without explanation for a specified number of years (usu. five or seven). 0 This type of law is named after a Tennyson poem, in which the eponymous hero, having been shipwrecked for years on a desert island, returns home to find that his wife has remarried. He selflessly conceals his identity from her so that she can remain with her new husband. - Also spelled Enoc Arden law. See presumptive death under DEATH; ABANDONMENT (2).