The Karnataka High Court refused a husband’s divorce plea under Section 13(1A) of the Hindu Marriage Act, holding a Hindu marriage is a sacrament, not a contract to exit at will.
The Karnataka High Court has held that a spouse cannot exit a marriage and claim a decree of divorce simply by asserting that he no longer has any interest in continuing the relationship, reaffirming that a marriage solemnised under Hindu law is a sacrament rather than a contract that can be terminated at will
A Division Bench of Justices D.K. Singh and T.M. Nadaf returned the finding while declining a husband’s appeal against a family court order that had refused to dissolve his marriage.
Rejecting the notion that a loss of interest could by itself furnish a ground for dissolution, the Bench observed,
“The marriage under the Hindu Law is a sacrament and it is not a contract. Once the parties are married, the marriage is for life and one person cannot walk away from the marriage on the ground that he/she is left with no interest in the marriage with the other party.”
The appeal, preferred under the Family Courts Act, 1984, arose from a judgment of the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Mysuru, which had earlier dismissed the husband’s petition for divorce filed under Section 13(1A) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
The couple had married on December 15, 2003, in a union the Court noted was both a love marriage and one across caste lines. A daughter born of the marriage is now on the verge of adulthood. The dispute had reached the courts once before, in 2019, when the husband sought a divorce and the wife filed for restitution of conjugal rights under Section 9 of the Act.
Those cross-petitions were heard together and disposed of by a common judgment, under which the family court granted the wife’s plea for restitution and turned down the husband’s request for divorce. The husband thereafter invoked Section 13(1A), arguing that cohabitation had not resumed despite the restitution decree, that his attempts to bring the wife back had come to nothing, and that the marriage had for all practical purposes broken down irretrievably.
The wife refuted the allegations of cruelty and incompatibility. She stated that she had cared for the husband and his parents and had never pressed for a separate household, explaining that the couple’s residence on the first floor of the family home had been arranged on the advice of her in-laws in connection with religious observances associated with her Brahmin background. She denied having quarrelled with the husband or his family at any point.
The family court had found that no case of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) was established against her. Of particular significance, the husband conceded during cross-examination that he had not resumed married life for the simple reason that he was disinclined to do so an admission that weighed against his plea.
Before the High Court, counsel for the husband pressed that the relationship was effectively dead, that the husband had no wish to sustain it, and that a decree of divorce ought to follow.
The Bench was unpersuaded. It took the view that the husband was, in substance, seeking to benefit from his own wrongdoing having entered into a love marriage, raised a daughter now almost grown, and then approached the Court with nothing more than an assertion that his interest in the marriage had faded.
Reiterating that a Hindu marriage cannot be walked away from on such a plea, the Court found no ground to disturb the family court’s conclusions and dismissed the appeal.
The provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (HMA) in play.
Section 9 of the HMA provides for the restitution of conjugal rights. Where one spouse has, without reasonable excuse, withdrawn from the society of the other, the aggrieved spouse may petition the court for a decree directing the withdrawing party to return to the matrimonial home and resume cohabitation.
Section 13(1A)(ii) permits either party to a marriage to seek divorce where there has been no restitution of conjugal rights between them for a period of one year or more after the passing of a decree for restitution. Notably, this ground is available to either spouse including, in principle, the one against whom the restitution decree was passed.
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That, however, is subject to an important qualification. Under Section 23(1)(a) of the Act, a matrimonial court can grant relief only if the petitioner is not, in any manner, seeking to take advantage of his or her own wrong. The practical effect is that a spouse who is himself responsible for the failure to resume cohabitation cannot ordinarily convert that very default into a ground for divorce in his own favour.
Section 13(1)(ia) separately makes cruelty a ground for divorce a ground the husband had sought to invoke against the wife in the earlier round of litigation. The appeal itself came to the High Court under the Family Courts Act, 1984, which provides for appeals from the judgments and orders of a family court to the High Court.
The order under challenge was that of the Additional Principal Judge, Family Court, Mysuru, which had dismissed the husband’s petition under Section 13(1A).