Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Opinion National Interest PoV 50-Word Edit

ThePrint On Camera Videos In Pictures

Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

Indian courts are clueless about live-in relationships. They’re bumbling along case by case

The real difficulty for courts lies in the fact that statutes can regulate marriage more easily than they can regulate emotional realities.

A couple may live together for years, share rent, expenses, intimacy and even children—yet when the relationship breaks down, Indian law struggles to answer a simple question: What exactly was this relationship in the eyes of law? A marriage without rituals? A private arrangement between consenting adults? Or merely an emotional partnership carrying no legal consequences at all?

That uncertainty is no longer theoretical. It is now reaching courts through maintenance claims, domestic violence proceedings, rape allegations, inheritance disputes and ugly battles over property and separation. Family courts and magistrates are increasingly dealing with disputes arising out of relationships that exist outside formal marriage but often resemble marriage in every practical sense.

Indian society has changed far more rapidly than the legal system anticipated.

The old assumption was simple: Intimacy belonged inside marriage. That is  rapidly collapsing, particularly in urban India. Relationships today are shaped by mobility, financial independence, emotional dissatisfaction, delayed marriages and changing expectations from companionship itself. The law, meanwhile, is still trying to catch up.

Legally, one issue is now reasonably settled. Consenting adults have the constitutional right to live together outside marriage. It was recognised in Lata Singh v. State of UP (2006), where the Supreme Court held that an adult woman is free to live with anyone of her choice. A few years later, in S. Khushboo v. Kanniammal (2010), the Court refused to criminalise consensual live-in relationships merely because they offended social morality.

That settled one constitutional question. It created several others.

Also read: Shared groceries & dreams, no legal protection. Extra-marital live-ins are uncharted territory

The nature of marriage

If two adults can legally live together outside marriage, what happens when the relationship collapses? Can one partner seek maintenance? Can long-term cohabitation create inheritance rights? Can a failed relationship later become a rape prosecution on allegations of false promise of marriage? And what happens where one or both partners were already married to somebody else?

These questions have no single legislative answer because India still has no dedicated law governing live-in relationships. Courts have therefore been building the framework case by case, often cautiously and sometimes inconsistently.

Where both partners are unmarried, courts have shown the greatest willingness to extend legal protection.

In D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal (2010), the Supreme Court attempted to identify when a live-in relationship could qualify as a “relationship in the nature of marriage.” Shared residence, prolonged cohabitation, legal........

© ThePrint