Wife Pressuring Husband To Cut Family Ties Amounts To Cruelty: High Court
A wife pressurising her husband to sever ties with his family members amounts to cruelty, the Delhi High Court has said and upheld an order dissolving an estranged couple's marriage.
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Delhi High Court ruled that compelling a spouse to disconnect from family constitutes cruelty (File)
New Delhi:
The Delhi High Court has upheld a marriage dissolution order, stating that when a wife pressures her husband to cut ties with his family, it constitutes cruelty. The court delivered this significant judgment in a case involving an estranged couple.
Additionally, the high court emphasized that subjecting a partner to repeated public humiliation and verbal abuse qualifies as mental cruelty.
"While merely wanting to live separately doesn't amount to cruelty, persistent pressure to sever the husband's family bonds certainly does. The Supreme Court has previously established that a wife's continuous attempts to alienate her husband from his parents represents mental cruelty," stated the September 16 verdict delivered by Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar.
This ruling effectively dismissed the woman's appeal against a family court's decision to dissolve the marriage on grounds of cruelty.
The bench observed that the wife had repeatedly expressed her unwillingness to live in a joint family arrangement and pressured her husband to divide the family property and separate from his widowed mother and divorced sister.
The court identified that filing multiple police complaints against the husband and his family members constituted one of the most evident acts of cruelty qualifying as grounds for divorce.
According to the bench, the husband successfully provided consistent and corroborated testimony establishing acts of cruelty attributable to his wife.
The court also noted that preventing the man and his family from having emotional and physical access to the couple's child represented a particularly severe form of cruelty.
"The respondent has successfully demonstrated a consistent pattern of pressure, humiliation, threats and alienation. Collectively, these behaviors extend far beyond the 'ordinary wear and tear of married life' and constitute mental cruelty of such severity that the respondent cannot reasonably be expected to endure them," the bench concluded.