In January 2023, the Punjab and Haryana High Court upheld a divorce after a wife pressured her husband to live separately from his parents. The couple’s marriage dissolved after the husband refused to comply with her demands, which led her to leave him.
The husband presented evidence that his wife constantly harassed him to move away from his parents and insisted that he open his clinic in Jalandhar, where her parents live. When the husband refused, she moved in with her parents. After the birth of their child, the husband visited his wife with gifts, sweets, and clothes, requesting her return. However, her parents insisted on a separate residence as a condition for her and the child to rejoin him.
A division bench, consisting of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Manisha Batra, also noted that the wife had falsely implicated her husband and his family in a criminal case, from which they were later acquitted. The High Court dismissed the wife’s appeal against the Jalandhar family court’s 2015 decision, which had granted the husband’s request for divorce.
The couple married in November 1990, following Hindu rites, and initially lived together as husband and wife. However, the wife refused to live in a joint family and opposed her husband starting his medical practice in Oel village, Himachal Pradesh, where his family resided. In January 1992, while pregnant, the wife left her husband and later gave birth to their son in her parents’ home in Jalandhar, Punjab.
The High Court found that the marriage had broken down irretrievably, with no hope of reconciliation. The court also noted that the wife had filed a petition under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which was dismissed due to her non-appearance.
The court upheld the divorce but ordered the husband to pay Rs 15 lakh to his ex-wife as permanent alimony. The bench emphasized that living apart for an extended period, combined with the lack of companionship, amounted to an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.
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