Daijiworld Media Network – New Delhi

New Delhi, Nov 26: The Supreme Court has held that a marriage cannot be treated as irretrievably broken merely because a couple is living separately. The court said it is essential to determine who was responsible for breaking the marital relationship before arriving at such a conclusion.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymala Bagchi made these observations on November 14 while setting aside a Uttarakhand High Court order that had granted divorce to a man. The Supreme Court directed the high court to reconsider the case.

The bench noted that courts often assume a marriage has collapsed because the spouses are not living together. It said such assumptions should not be made without examining whether one partner forced the other to live separately.

The Supreme Court said that unless there is clear evidence of willful desertion or refusal to cohabit and care for the other spouse, concluding that a marriage has irretrievably broken down can have serious consequences, especially for children. It added that the high court had not carried out the required examination of evidence and circumstances in this case.

The woman had appealed to the Supreme Court after the high court granted her husband a divorce on the ground of cruelty. The couple married in 2009 and has a son. The Supreme Court observed that the wife had been thrown out of the matrimonial home and forced to live separately, and noted that the child had remained in her custody from the beginning.