Unworkable marriage source of greater misery for couple: Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

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Chandigarh, March 11

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that preservation in law of an unworkable marriage is bound to be a source of greater misery for the parties.

The Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma also made it clear that the court should seriously make an endeavour to reconcile the parties, but divorce should not be withheld if it was found that the breakdown was irreparable.

Mediation failed

The appellant and the respondent were living separately since May 2011. Efforts were made to resolve the matrimonial dispute through the process of mediation. But the mediation failed. Justice Ashok Kumar Verma, Punjab & Haryana High Court

The ruling came on an appeal filed by an army officer for setting aside the judgment and decree dated December 11, 2018, passed by the Principal Judge of a Family Court, whereby his petition for a decree of nullity and dissolution of marriage between the parties by a decree of divorce was dismissed. Speaking for the Bench, Justice Verma asserted that matrimonial issues were matters of delicate human and emotional relationship. These demanded mutual trust, regard, respect, love and affection with sufficient play for reasonable adjustments with the spouse. The relationship was required to conform to the social norms as well.

The matrimonial conduct had now come to be governed by a statute framed after keeping in view such norms and changed social order. The conduct was sought to be controlled in the interest of the individuals as well as in the broader perspective for regulating matrimonial norms “for the making of a well-knit, healthy and not a disturbed and porous society”.

Justice Verma added the issue for consideration in the present appeal was whether the relationship between the couple had come to an end and whether the respondent-wife’s unwillingness to give mutual divorce to the appellant-husband amounted to cruelty towards him “keeping in view the fact she was not staying with him for the last decade and there was no scope of cohabit as husband and wife again”.