De Facto Marriage in India: Rights, Obligations, and Supreme Court Rulings, Study notes of Law

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Rights and obligations of De Facto Marriage:

Provisions of law –

• To provide compensation to the person, in 2003 report of Criminal justice System came out, Whose Charmaine is Dr. Justice V.S. Malimath.
• He gave two recommendations on his report:

1- That evidence regarding a man and woman living together for a sufficiently long period should be enough to draw the presumption that the marriage was performed according to the customary rites and ceremonies of the parties. 2- Thus it is proposed that the word wife in section 125 of code of Criminal procedure, should be altered to include a woman who was living with the man like his wife for a reasonably protected period.

• In 2005 the new rule came out that is “Protection of women from domestic violence act 2005”

Under this section 2(f) it defines domestic relationship means a relationship between two persons who live or have at any point of time, lived together in a shared household, when they are related by consanguinity marriage or through a relationship in the nature of marriage adoption or are family members living together as a joint family.

Law on presumption of marriage –

Rulings of Supreme court of India

• Gokal chand v. Pravin kumari (1952), in this case court held, that continuous co-habitation of man and woman as husband and wife may raise the presumption of marriage, but the presumption which may be drawn from long co-habitation is rebuttable and if there are circumstances which weaken and destroy that presumption the court cannot ignore them.
• Badri Prasad vs. Dy director of consolidation (1978) , court held that a strong presumption arises in favour of wedlock where the partners have lived together for a long spell as husband and wife.

Although the presumption is rebuttable, a heavy burden lies on him who seeks to deprive the relationship of legal origin.

• Yamunabai Anantrao Adhav v. Anantrao Shivram Adhav and ors (1988), court held, the expression wife in section 125 of code should be interpreted to mean only a legally wedded wife.
• Dwarika Prasad Sathpathy v. Bidyut Prava Dixit (1999), court held, that the standard of prof cannot be strict,

And where the evidence are present of both are living as husband and wife then cannot refuse for maintenance.

Conclusion – The person who take advantage of de facto marriage cannot walk freely under social obligations. So the women only to prove that there was something like a relation of marriage.

(This Note are based on youtube video of Jeevan prakash, AOR, Supreme Court)

Priyanshu Yadav

Intern at ubAdvocate

Email – yadavpriyanshu831@gmail.com

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