Matrimonial litigation — cruelty and dowry harassment under Section 498A (and its misuse), maintenance and permanent alimony, divorce on irretrievable breakdown, the Section 13B cooling-off period, and child custody. Digests tracking how the courts balance protection against weaponisation.
The Supreme Court held that the six-month waiting period for mutual-consent divorce under s.13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act is directory and may be waived where reconciliation is impossible, the statutory separation is over, and the parties have genuinely settled custody, maintenance and alimony. The waiting period exists to allow second thoughts, not to prolong an agreed parting.
The Supreme Court quashed an FIR under Section 498A IPC, holding that vague, generalised allegations that mechanically rope in an entire family — without particularised acts of cruelty — cannot found a criminal prosecution and risk turning a protective provision into a tool of personal vendetta.
The Supreme Court quashed a s.498A IPC and Dowry Prohibition Act prosecution against a husband's brother and unmarried sister, holding that relatives cannot be dragged into a matrimonial dispute on a casual reference to their names without specific allegations of active involvement. The decision deprecates the practice of roping in the entire household and treats it as an abuse of process.
The Supreme Court restated the broad factors a court must weigh in fixing permanent alimony — status, the wife's reasonable needs, qualifications and employment, independent income, the marital standard of living, sacrifices for the family, litigation costs and the husband's capacity. Dissolving the marriage under Article 142, it fixed a one-time settlement of roughly ₹2 crore, holding that alimony must secure a decent life without being punitive.
In a cross-border custody dispute over two minor sons, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court's 'welfare alone' approach. The Court held that while the child's welfare is paramount, financial capacity, standard of living, comfort and education of the children — and the conduct of the parents — are all relevant. The matter was remanded for fresh consideration.
On 12 June 2026, the Rajasthan High Court held that a former wife who continued Section 498A IPC proceedings against her ex-husband and his family after accepting ₹20 lakh as alimony and obtaining a decree of mutual divorce was abusing the process of law. The Court rejected the argument that the criminal case stood wholly independent of the settled matrimonial dispute.
A five-judge Constitution Bench held that the Supreme Court may, under Article 142, dissolve a marriage that has irretrievably broken down to do complete justice — even without one spouse's consent and bypassing the family-court reference — and that the six-month cooling-off period under section 13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act is waivable in a fit case.
The Supreme Court held that psychological or psychiatric evaluation of children in custody and visitation disputes is not barred, but is permissible only on demonstrable necessity, with minimum intrusion, institutional neutrality and proportionality, the child's welfare paramount. Courts must distinguish therapeutic care from adversarial evaluation and guard against parental-alienation dynamics.
In 1986 a two-judge Bench led by Bhagwati, CJI held that the discriminatory Travancore Christian Succession Act 1916 had already been repealed in 1951, so Syrian Christian daughters of former Travancore take an equal share with sons under the Indian Succession Act 1925. A digest of the facts, the statutory ratio, and the retrospectivity controversy that followed.
In 1995 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that a Hindu husband who converts to Islam cannot validly contract a second marriage while his first Hindu marriage subsists — the second marriage is void and the convert is guilty of bigamy under Section 494 IPC. A digest of the facts, the ratio on conversion and bigamy, and the obiter call for a Uniform Civil Code.
In December 1996 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court set aside a High Court injunction and upheld a public corporation's right to invoke its bank guarantees. A digest of the facts, the autonomy of the unconditional guarantee, the two narrow exceptions of fraud and irretrievable injustice, and the doctrine's later trajectory.
In 2014 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu and bullock-cart races as cruelty under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, read the Five Freedoms into the statute, and gave the welfare of animals a constitutional vocabulary. A digest of the holding, the Five Freedoms standard, and how a 2023 Constitution Bench later distinguished the decision.
The Kerala High Court holds that passport authorities cannot demand a court divorce decree to delete a former spouse's name after a valid Muslim extra-judicial divorce such as khula or talaq.
In 1999 the Supreme Court read down 'after' in Section 6(a) of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956, holding the mother a natural guardian whenever the father is absent or indifferent.
The Supreme Court (April 2026) held that a reliable, consented DNA report on record overrides the conclusive presumption of legitimacy under s.112 / s.116.
On 13 July 2024, the Kerala High Court held that "husband" in Section 498A IPC means a married man — a woman's live-in partner, absent a legally recognised marriage, cannot be prosecuted for matrimonial cruelty, and the proceedings against him were quashed.
On 8 January 2025, the Telangana High Court reaffirmed in the BNS era that a parent who is a natural guardian taking the child from the other parent is not kidnapping under Section 137(2) BNS, and that custody disputes belong before the family court.
In 2013 the Supreme Court mapped the multi-factor test for a 'relationship in the nature of marriage' under Section 2(f) of the Domestic Violence Act, holding that knowledge of a partner's subsisting marriage ordinarily defeats the claim.
In 2000 the Supreme Court restored a husband's dowry-death conviction while confirming the acquittal of his relatives, warning against the tendency to rope in all the in-laws and insisting on a 'proximate and live link' against each accused.
On 24 June 2025, a Division Bench of the Telangana High Court held that a Muslim wife's right to dissolve her marriage by khula needs no husband's consent, and that Sharia councils and Muftis have no power to grant or refuse a divorce.
In 2017 a two-judge bench installed Family Welfare Committees to screen Section 498-A complaints; in 2018 a three-judge bench withdrew that extra-statutory machinery, restoring the Arnesh Kumar arrest discipline.
In 2020 the Supreme Court issued binding pan-India guidelines on maintenance across overlapping statutory regimes, prescribed a mandatory Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities, and ruled that maintenance is payable from the date of the application.
The 2021 Supreme Court restatement of dowry-death law, per Ramana CJI, explains the true import of 'soon before death' under Section 304B, the mandatory Section 113B presumption, and trial-court guidelines that reshaped how dowry-death cases are conducted.
A three-judge bench overruled S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra in 2020, holding that a 'shared household' under the Domestic Violence Act is not confined to property in which the husband holds title and can include a home owned by the in-laws.
On 12 May 2026, a two-judge bench expunged findings of cruelty and desertion against a dentist wife who had relocated from Kargil to Ahmedabad for tertiary medical care and to pursue her practice, holding that 'marriage does not eclipse her individuality' and retaining the divorce decree on the ground of irretrievable breakdown under Article 142.
In January 2026, a Calcutta HC Division Bench upheld a divorce decree on the ground of cruelty under section 13(1)(ia) HMA, holding that a husband maligning his wife at her workplace, questioning her chastity and abusing her before colleagues strikes at the core of dignity protected under Article 21.
On 29 May 2026, a two-judge bench quashed POCSO and rape proceedings against an estranged husband's family on findings of tutored 'parrot-like' testimony, and articulated for the first time at Supreme Court level an explicit ethical duty on advocates not to assist vexatious matrimonial-dispute prosecutions.
On 21 February 2026, the Karnataka High Court set aside a CIC order directing disclosure of a husband's income tax returns to his wife under the RTI Act, holding that IT returns are 'personal information' exempt under section 8(1)(j) and issuing gender-neutral guidelines for financial-disclosure discovery in maintenance proceedings.
Justice Neerja K. Kalson held that a maternal grandmother in actual care and custody of her granddaughter has sufficient eligibility to maintain a section 125 CrPC application on the minor's behalf where the parental relationship has broken down; the minor's statutory right to maintenance cannot be defeated by a technical objection to who instituted the petition.
On 19 April 2024, the Supreme Court held that a Hindu marriage is invalid without the requisite Section 7 ceremonies; a registration certificate alone confers no marital status.
Calcutta HC holds a spouse who concealed a prior marriage and 498A history cannot win a cruelty divorce; clean hands and constructive desertion bar relief.
On 28 April 1976, in the depths of the Emergency, a five-judge Constitution Bench held by 4:1 that a person detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act could not move habeas corpus because the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 stood suspended by the Presidential Proclamation under Article 359. Justice H.R. Khanna's sole dissent — that life and liberty are not the Constitution's gift to be taken away by it — cost him the Chief Justiceship. Forty-one years later, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, a nine-judge Bench explicitly overruled the majority and adopted the Khanna dissent as the constitutional position. A digest of the judgment, its setting, the dissent, the supersession, and the doctrine that has supplanted it.
On 28 September 2001, a five-judge Constitution Bench upheld the constitutional validity of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 — but read its principal provision as requiring the husband to make reasonable and fair provision for the maintenance of the divorced wife beyond the iddat period, including for her future. The judgment is the foundational doctrinal contribution that preserved the maintenance architecture of Shah Bano through interpretation of the 1986 Act, and supplies the doctrinal frame within which the more recent Mohd Abdul Samad v. State of Telangana operates.
On 10 July 2024, a two-judge bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih held that a divorced Muslim woman is entitled to claim maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (now Section 144 of the BNSS, 2023) against her husband, and that the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 operates in addition to — not in derogation of — that secular maintenance right. The judgment is the most consequential restoration of the Shah Bano line in the post-1986 period.
The Supreme Court's 2014 ruling that arrest in offences carrying up to seven years is not a clerical reflex — and the checklist its bench wrote into the working life of every station-house officer. A close digest, with the directions verbatim and a reading on how they travel onto BNSS s. 35.
On 23 April 1985, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud held that Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure — the secular maintenance framework — applies to Muslim women, and that the right to maintenance does not end with the iddat period where the divorced wife is unable to support herself. The judgment's substantive disposition was reversed by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986; the constitutional architecture it articulated, however, has continued to govern subsequent engagement with the question. A digest of the holding, the reasoning, and the doctrinal trajectory.