‘Ideal couples don’t go to court’: Why Jharkhand High Court rejected 55-year-old man’s divorce plea after 4-decade marriage

Highlighting that petty quibbles and trifling differences should not be inflated to abolish what is said to have been made in heaven, the court said that simple trivialities, which can be described as a reasonable wear and tear of married life, cannot amount to cruelty.

“The foundation of a sound marriage is acceptance, adjustment, and respecting one another. Tolerance of each other’s faults to a certain bearable extent has to be inherent in every marriage,” the order observed.

40 years of marriage

• The petitioner husband and the respondent wife married according to Hindu rites in April 1985 and have four adult children.
• He first filed for divorce in 2022, and the family court dismissed his petition in 2024.
• Challenging the December 2024 judgment from the family court in Dhanbad, he moved the high court and sought divorce under Section 13(1)(i)(a) and (i)(b) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which deals with cruelty and desertion, alleging that his wife had treated him cruelly, converted to Christianity to live in a church, and was involved in an illicit relationship with their driver.
• He further contended that she had deserted the matrimonial home in September 2020.
• The husband’s advocate argued that the wife’s conversion led to a change in behaviour and that she had abandoned her family for over four years without reason.
• The wife’s counsel countered that the separation was a direct result of the husband’s habitual alcoholism and continued physical and mental torture.
• The wife’s counsel further clarified that both parties had actually adopted Christianity years before the dispute, the wife in 2008 and the husband in 2011.

‘All quarrels not cruelty’

• The nature of allegations need not only be illegal conduct, such as asking for dowry.
• Making allegations against the spouse in a written statement filed before the court in judicial proceedings may also be held to constitute cruelty.
• It is a settled position that a proceeding under the Hindu Marriage Act is not a criminal proceeding where proof beyond a reasonable doubt is required; “preponderance of probability” is enough.
• However, a spouse’s character affects his/her reputation in society.
• Cruelty, under matrimonial law, consists of conduct so grave and weighty as to lead one to the conclusion that one of the spouses cannot reasonably be expected to live with the other spouse.
• It is evident from the interpretation of the word “cruelty” that daily tear and wear is not construed to be the cruelty while on the other hand desertion means parting away one spouse from the other, but while deciding the issue of desertion, the factum of parting away is to be seen as to whether the parting away is due to compulsion or with her volition.
• Cruelty must be of such a type that it will satisfy the conscience of the court that the relationship between the parties has deteriorated to such an extent that it has become impossible for them to live together without mental agony.
• The cruelty practised may be in many forms, and it must be productive of an apprehension in the mind of the other spouse that it is dangerous to live with the erring party.
• In many marriages, each party can, if it so wills, discover many a cause for complaint, but such grievances arise mostly from temperamental disharmony.
• Such disharmony or incompatibility is not cruelty and will not furnish a cause for the dissolution of marriage.
• All quarrels must be weighed from that point of view in determining what constitutes cruelty in each particular case, and always keeping in view the physical and mental conditions of the parties, their character, and social status.
• A too technical and hyper-sensitive approach would be counterproductive to the institution of marriage.