SC to examine if a ‘stranger’ can challenge validity of marriage

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will look into the legal principle that only a wife or a husband can challenge a marriage, and determine if the validity of a wedlock can be contested by a ‘stranger’.

Judicial precedents hold that only the husband or the wife can maintain a challenge to a wedlock under the Family Courts Act. A bench of top court justices Indira Banerjee and V Ramasubramanian have now admitted a matter to examine this after the daughter of a deceased man sought to invalidate her father’s second marriage with a woman.

The daughter has contended that her stepmother was not a divorcee and was already married to someone else when she married her father in 2003. Therefore, she contends, her father’s second marriage was invalid.

The case involved provisions of the Family Courts Act and some decisions of high courts on the point of locus standi (legal standing) of individuals who can question the validity of a marriage.

The legal conundrum reached the Supreme Court from a judgment of the Bombay high court in

March this year, allowing the daughter to proceed with her petition before a family court for a declaration that the second marriage of her father was null and void since her stepmother was already married.

The father, who was Hindu and a businessman, died in 2015. A year later, the daughter, 66, filed a petition claiming that her stepmother, who was a Muslim belonging to Dawoodi Bohra section, was not validly divorced from her previous husband.

In July 2019, the family court refused to entertain the daughter’s petition after the stepmother referred to the judgments to show that the former was a stranger and could not legally have a say in the validity of the relationship. The family court further noted that since the daughter had not asked for invalidation of the marriage in any of her previous cases before the civil courts and the Bombay high court, she could not be permitted to press her petition now.

The daughter challenged this order before the HC, which overturned the family court’s order in May this year. The HC referred to a sub-clause under Section 7 of the Family Courts Act to hold that a family court can entertain a petition against validity of a marriage even if the proceedings have not been initiated by either the husband or the wife.

The HC added that a child cannot be said to be a ‘stranger’ in a situation like this when her father had passed away and she claimed to have come across certain proofs to show that the second marriage of her father was untenable.

Rajasthan HC, by a judgment in 2014, has also indicated that petitions by a third party will not be maintainable before the family courts when it pertains to the marriage of a couple. The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the daughter and will hear the matter in detail on August 13.

AT PRESENT, ONLY THE HUSBAND OR THE WIFE CAN MAINTAIN A CHALLENGE TO A WEDLOCK UNDER THE FAMILY COURTS ACT