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Married as minors. How to avoid giving maintenance after divorce?
20-May-2023 (In Divorce Law)
What do I do if my wife’s family has put a maintenance case against me in the district court wherein I am willing to take a Divorce but not pay her an amount of 5 Lakhs? I got married against my wish and will at the age of 17 and my wife was only 12 years. I told her family that when I start earning I will take her with me.
Now I am 26 and got a job 6 months ago. My wife’s parents came to know of that and are now forcing me to take her. I confessed that the marriage happened against me wish and now they demand a compensation of 5 lakhs.
What can I do?
Firstly, with respect to the child marriage laws in India, even though it is illegal, the child marriages is voidable at the discretion of the husband and wife as per a recent Supreme Court judgement.
However, in your case, the marriage is consummated and now you cannot claim the marriage as void and the court shall recognize it as a valid marriage. Now coming to the maintenance, we have to examine the application filed by your wife. The application of the maintenance is either filed under Section 24 of Hindu Marriage Act or under Section 125 CRPC (Criminal Procedure Code), so we have to examine under which provision of law your wife has filed the application.
We suggest you to defend the application and there have been number of cases wherein Court has refused maintenance on the grounds like if the wife refuses to stay with the husband, if they are living separately by mutual consent or if she is living in adultery, or where she has sufficient means to maintain herself.
Depending on the facts of your case, you can plead any of the ground mentioned above in your reply. If you have a valid ground and if the Court is satisfied, the court can refuse maintenance.
Kindly contact us for any further details and action.
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Adv. Sudershani Ray
Delhi | 200+ Answers
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Disclaimer: The above query and its response is NOT a legal opinion in any way whatsoever as this is based on the information shared by the person posting the query at lawrato.com and has been responded by one of the Divorce Lawyers at lawrato.com to address the specific facts and details.
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