matrimonial

Bombay High Court

divorce petition

petitioner

native village

properties

Divorce battle: High Court’s order applies if the estranged husband and mother-in-law don’t move out of thehome in a week.Thehas authorised a woman to seek the police’s help to evict her estranged husband and his mother from the matrimonial home if the two don’t leave on their own accord within a week.The court issued the unusual ruling on Thursday after it concluded that the husband had arranged for his mother’s stay there as part of an indirect tactic to prevent the wife from gaining full possession of the apartment.A family court, which is currently hearing the wife’s, had last year backed her sole right to residence and asked the husband to move out. Later, it also ordered his mother’s removal. He challenged the directives in the high court, which has also ruled in the wife’s favour.Justice RD Dhanuka observed that the husband “cannot be allowed to keep his mother in the flat so as to create obstructions” for the wife and their son. “Action on the part of the[husband], in my view, is extremely contemptuous. What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly,” he observed.The couple got married in 2004, but their relationship later soured. Two years ago, the woman approached the family court seeking divorce on the ground of cruelty by her husband and mother-in-law. At the time, she had shifted to her parents’ house. She later filed an application to win back possession of the matrimonial home. The couple had jointly purchased the apartment, but the wife had paid a larger share of the property price.She shared with the family court various audio recordings of her husband’s alleged verbal abuse. The court observed that his behaviour had been aggressive and he appeared to have subjected her to domestic violence. In May last year, it instructed him not to re-enter the apartment till the rights of the two were decided in the main petition.The husband left the house, but asked his mother to start staying there. He often visited her, prompting the wife to bring the issue to the family court’s notice. In April this year, the court said the mother should also move out.The husband appealed in the high court, contending that no order could be passed against his mother without giving her a hearing. But the high court accepted the wife’s arguments that neither he nor his mother own the flat. It also said the mother had not been staying there from the start or when the family court issued its first order.The wife told the high court that her estranged husband and the mother-in-law had houses in the city and in their, and they could easily live in one of the