Nullity of Marriage and Divorce
Any marriage can be voidable and may be annulled on the following grounds: the marriage has not been consummated due to impotency, contravention of the valid consent mental illness condition specified in Section 5, or that the respondent at the time of the marriage was pregnant by someone other than the petitioner. Divorce can be sought by husband or wife on certain grounds, including: adultery, cruelty, continuous period of desertion for two or more years, conversion to a religion other than Hindu, mental abnormality, venereal disease, and leprosy. A wife can also present a petition for the dissolution of marriage on the ground of if the husband marries again after the commencement of his first marriage or if the husband has been guilty of rape, sodomy, or bestiality. Despite the fact that marriage is held to be divine, the act does permit one spouse to separate if he/she is unhappy, if he/she can prove or identify the circumstances that have made the union untenable. Newly married couples cannot file a petition for divorce within one year of marriage.
Read more about this topic: Hindu Marriage Act
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or divorce:
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connection can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)