Section 14—No petition for divorce to be presented within one year of marriage:
According to this section no court shall entertain a petition for divorce before the expiration of a period of one year from the date of marriage. Prior to the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Act, 1976, no court could entertain a petition for divorce before the expirations of three years from the date of marriage but the aforesaid Amendment Act reduced the period of waiting to one year.
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ADVERTISEMENTS:
The section also provides that the court could entertain a petition even before the expiry of one year in cases of exceptional hardship to the petitioner or exceptional depravity of the respondent. The court has also been given the discretion to dismiss the main petition or to postpone the operation of the decree for one year from the date of marriage if it transpires that the leave has been obtained by misrepresentations or concealment of the facts.
Sub-section (2) of Section 14 provides that the interests of the children born of the marriage and the chances of reconciliation between the parties are also be kept in view by the court while deciding an application under this Section.
Object of the Section:
In the famous case of Meghanatha Nayyar v. Smt. Susheela the Madras High Court observed that Section 14 provides restrictions presumably designed to prevent party recourse to legal proceedings before the parties have made real effort to save their marriage from disaster.
It is grounded on public policy because marriage is the foundation of civil society and no part of the laws and Constitution of a country can be of more vital importance to its subjects than those which regulated the manner and conditions of forming and, if necessary, of dissolving marriage contract.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The expressions “Exceptional hardships” and “exceptional depravity” have not been explained in the Act. The scope of these expressions is very extensive and they are pregnant with the sense of uncommonness and covered with extraordinary situations. Hence where the petitioner is faced with such hardships that his or her life has turned to be a complete hell or the respondent has committed such a heinous moral offence that it has become completely intolerable to the petitioner it would be possible to pass a decree for divorce without waiting for the expiry of the stipulated period of one year.
In Meglianatha v. Smt. Susheela, following the English case Bowmen v. Bowmen, the Court held that this case gave some guidance in considering what could be treated as exceptional hardship or depravity by laying the following general principles:
(1) Adultery with one person is not exceptional depravity.
(2) Adultery plus disertion in favour of another woman by the husband plus cruelty to his wife constitutes exceptional hardship to the wife.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(3) Apart from adultery coupled with another matrimonial offence the consequences of adultery may cause exceptional hardship, e.g., when a wife has a child by adultery.
(4) If a husband commits adultery within a few weeks of his marriage, or promiscuously with his wife’s sister, or a servant in the home, that may be held to be exceptional depravity.
(5) Cruelty coupled with aggravating circumstances, e.g., drunkenness and neglect may be exceptional hardship on the aggrieved spouse or if coupled with perverted lust exceptional depravity by the proposed respondent.
(6) Adultery with the wife’s sister or servant in the house.
(7) Husband’s adultery promiscuously with other woman.
In Vinod Arora v. Manju, the Delhi High Court observed that the hardship which entitles spouse to move an application under Section 14 of the Act has got to be exceptional. Mere fact that after three days of marriage, the wife refused to have any sexual intercourse with the husband or that she used to remain absent from the matrimonial home without any reasonable cause or excuse, would not be sufficient to make out a case of exceptional hardship so as to entitle him to move the petition for dissolution before the expiry of one year from the date of marriage.
According to sub-section (2), in deciding any application under sub-section (1), the court must have regard to the interest of children born of the wedlock and the question whether there is reasonable probability of a reconciliation between the parties. These considerations are extraneous to the consideration of exceptional hardship or deparvity. In every situation the possibility of reconciliation has to be given primary.
Even when the relations between the spouses may be strained and there may be no immediate prospect of reconciliation, still the interest of the child should be given paramount consideration. In the field of matrimonial relationship a purely mechanistic and formal approachs is not called for. One has to view and perform this task in a broad perspective.