A man can divorce his wife on the ground of cruelty if she forced him persistently to live separately from his aged parents, the Supreme Court has held.
A bench of Justices Anil R Dave and L Nageswara Rao said after marriage, a wife is expected to be with the husband’s family and normally, without any justifiable reason, she would never insist that her husband should get separated from his family and live only with her.
The court made these observations while setting aside a Karnataka High Court judgment, which had overturned a Bengaluru court order granting divorce to a man on the ground of cruelty.
The apex court noted that the wife wanted her husband to live separately from his parents.
She made repeated threats to commit suicide if he did not give in to her demands. “A son, brought up and given education by his parents, has a moral and legal obligation to take care and maintain the parents when they become old and when they have either no income or have a meagre income. In India, generally people do not subscribe to the western thought, where, upon getting married or attaining adulthood, the son gets separated from the family,” the bench said.
DH News Service