enoch arden law
Enoch Arden law (ee-n[schwa]k ahrd-[schwa]n). 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). • 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). [Cases: Divorce 37(5); Marriage 11. C.J.S. Divorce § 46; Marriage § 18.]
