Supreme Court grants divorce on finding couple separated for 24 years over wife going to work after marriage

The Supreme Court recently said that when spouses hold irreconcilably opposing views on marriage and refuse to accommodate each other, their conduct itself amounts to cruelty and becomes a valid ground for divorce.

A Bench of Justices Manmohan and Joymalya Bagchi noted that both spouses had a different approach towards marriage - the husband wanted his wife to quit her job, but the wife wanted to continue working after marriage.

Hence, the Bench came to the conclusion that where two people have fundamentally different views about marriage and refuse to accommodate each other, that conflict itself becomes a form of cruelty.

The Bench observed that in matrimonial matters, it is not the Court’s role to decide whose view of marriage is “correct,” but to recognise that a relationship built on mutual resentment and refusal to compromise cannot be sustained.

“It is not for the society or for the Court to sit in judgment over which spouse’s approach is correct or not. It is their strongly held views and their refusal to accommodate each other that amounts to cruelty to one another,” the Court said while allowing divorce to the husband after finding that were living separately for 24 years.

The case arose from a marriage solemnised in Shillong in 2000 between two Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) employees. The wife continued working after marriage while the husband and his family allegedly pressured her to quit. She eventually left the matrimonial home in 2001, claiming harassment over her decision to continue her job and to support her ailing mother and siblings.

Two years later, the husband filed for divorce alleging desertion under Section 13(1)(i-b) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955. That suit was dismissed as premature since the mandatory two-year period of separation had not elapsed. He filed a fresh divorce petition in 2007 alleging that his wife had wilfully deserted him.

In 2010, the trial court accepted the husband’s claim and dissolved the marriage. The wife appealed to the Gauhati High Court’s Shillong Bench, which in 2011 reversed the divorce decree. The High Court found that there was no intention on the wife’s part to permanently forsake her husband and that she was forced to leave due to ill-treatment.

The High Court noted that the husband had made no genuine attempts at reconciliation and appeared content with his wife’s departure. It concluded that the evidence did not prove desertion, and that the husband was trying to “take advantage of his own wrong.”

After this reversal, the husband approached the Supreme Court in 2012. Over the course of 13 years, the appeal remained pending while the parties continued living separately.

At the outset, the Supreme Court noted that the couple had no children, had lived apart for more than two decades, and worked in the same office without interacting with each other. Despite multiple attempts, including mediation directed by the Court in 2012, reconciliation failed.

The bench held that such prolonged estrangement also amounts to cruelty to both sides.

The Court clarified that the fault-based theory under the Hindu Marriage Act does not restrict its constitutional powers to grant divorce when the marriage has completely broken down. It added that continuing such litigation for decades only prolongs emotional suffering.

Thus, the bench concluded that there was no sanctity left in the marriage and rapprochement was not in the realm of possibility. Since there were no children and the marriage had irretrievably broken down, it held that the husband and wife should be allowed to end the relationship formally.

Accordingly, it set aside the Gauhati High Court’s 2011 decision and restored the decree of divorce granted by the trial court in 2010.

The appellant (husband) was represented by advocate Arvind Kumar Gupta.

The respondent (wife) was represented by advocates Bikas Kar Gupta, Azim M Laskar, Chandra Bhushan Prasad and Nilkamal Chaubey.

[Read Judgment]