Man can't seek divorce over wife's desire for bed tea: HC

 A man cannot claim cruelty and seek divorce from his wife for asking him to serve her tea in bed and over her habit of rising late, the Delhi High Court has said.

This can be called laziness which does not constitute cruelty, the court said. It also held that the wife’s denial of sex during pregnancy cannot be the ground for divorce.
In a significant verdict delivered on Thursday, a bench of Justices Pradeep Nandrajog and Pratibha Rani rejected the plea of a Delhi resident seeking divorce over his wife refusing sex during pregnancy. The man also questioned her insistence on being served tea in bed.

“The assertion that wife would get up late and would want tea to be served to her would at best show that she was lazy, and laziness is not cruelty,” the court said.
The man raised several grounds to end his matrimonial alliance. Among others was his contention that the wife thwarted all his advances since August 2012 and severed cohabitation.

The court, however, noted the couple who married in February 2012 was blessed with a girl child within a year. “This fact shows the couple shared the bed,” the court said, raising serious doubts about the man’s charges.

“Carrying a foetus in the womb, she would obviously be inconvenienced by sex and assuming she totally shunned sex with the petitioner as her pregnancy grew would not constitute cruelty,” the bench reasoned.

The court also found as vague the other contentions by the man that his wife had an illicit relationship.