Should Long Separation, Bitter Relationship Be Ended?

  •   Sat, May 13 2023
  •   By John B Monteiro

May 13, 2023

“Divorce is like an amputation: You survive it, but there’s less of you.” – Margaret Atwood (b.1938), Canadian poet, novelist and literary critic.

A bench of the Supreme Court has said that a marital relationship which has only become more bitter and acrimonious over the years, does nothing but inflicts cruelty on both the sides, as it dissolved marriage of a couple, living separately for 25 years.

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and J B Pardiwala said irretrievable breakdown of marriage can be read as the ground of "cruelty" under Section 13 (1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act for the dissolution of marriage.

The court allowed a plea by a man against the Delhi High Court's 2011 judgement which reversed the family court's order granting him divorce. It, however, ordered him to pay Rs 30 lakh as permanent (one-time) alimony to the wife.

It noted that the couple had lived together as husband and wife for barely four years and no child was born out of the wedlock. The bench said irretrievable breakdown of a marriage may not be a ground for dissolution of marriage, under the Hindu Marriage Act, but continuation of this marriage would mean furthering cruelty, which is inflicted on each other.

"To keep the façade of this broken marriage alive would be doing injustice to both the parties. A marriage which has broken down irretrievably, in our opinion spells cruelty to both the parties, as in such a relationship each party is treating the other with cruelty. It is therefore a ground for dissolution of marriage under Section 13 (1) (ia) of the Act," the bench said.

The bench further said the long separation and absence of cohabitation and the complete breakdown of all meaningful bonds and the existing bitterness between the two, has to be read as cruelty under Section 13(1) (ia) of the 1955 Act.

"We therefore hold that in a given case, such as the one at hand, where the marital relationship has broken down irretrievably, where there is a long separation and absence of cohabitation (as in the present case for the last 25 years), with multiple Court cases between the parties; then continuation of such a ‘marriage’ would only mean giving sanction to cruelty which each is inflicting on the other. We are also conscious of the fact that a dissolution of this marriage would affect only the two parties as there is no child out of the wedlock," the bench said.

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By John B Monteiro
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