{"id":35774,"date":"2026-09-03T12:15:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/madras-high-court-wife-cannot-be-expected-to-follow-husband-like-pug\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:15:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:45:36","slug":"madras-high-court-wife-cannot-be-expected-to-follow-husband-like-pug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/madras-high-court-wife-cannot-be-expected-to-follow-husband-like-pug\/","title":{"rendered":"Madras High Court: Wife Cannot Be Expected To Follow Husband Like Pug"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Madras High Court, while hearing a dispute between a couple, said that a wife cannot be expected to follow her husband around like the pug dog in the Vodafone advertisement. The court said that a wife is not required to accompany her husband every time he moves to another place for work or other reasons.<\/p>\n

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The case involved a couple who had been living separately for nearly 16 years. The husband had moved to Mumbai for work without taking his wife with him. The Family Court had rejected his divorce petition on this ground, but the High Court overturned the decision and granted him a divorce.<\/p>\n

Husband had accused wife of having an extramarital affair<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his divorce petition, the husband had accused his wife of having an extramarital relationship with another man. However, a bench of Justice G.R. Swaminathan and Justice M.D. Sumathy of the High Court did not accept the allegation.<\/p>\n

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The court said that the man alleged to be the wife’s lover had not been made a party to the case. It said that the other person must also be impleaded in such a case. Since this was not done, the allegation could not be sustained on this ground.<\/p>\n

Why the Family Court rejected the husband’s petition<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Family Court had held that the husband himself had left his wife and moved to Mumbai for work. Since he had not taken his wife with him, he could not seek a divorce by taking advantage of his own wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

The High Court rejected this reasoning and said that the \u2018wrong\u2019 referred to under Section 23(1)(a) of the Hindu Marriage Act means conduct that is serious or contrary to justice and proper conduct.<\/p>\n

Marriage took place in 1992, couple has four children<\/strong><\/p>\n

The couple got married in September 1992 and have four children. The husband was 67 years old at the time of the hearing.<\/p>\n

The court also found that the wife had not taken any formal steps to resume living with her husband. She had neither written to him asking him to live with her again nor sent him any legal notice.<\/p>\n

Court also tried to facilitate a settlement<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bench tried to facilitate a settlement between the two sides, but the attempt failed. The court said there was considerable bitterness between them and that there was no possibility of them living together again.<\/p>\n

The High Court, citing the Supreme Court’s judgment in Rakesh Raman vs Kavita, said that prolonged separation, failure to live together and the complete breakdown of a marital relationship can constitute cruelty.<\/p>\n

On this basis, the High Court set aside the Family Court’s decision. The husband was directed to deposit \u20b97 lakh as maintenance for his wife. The divorce order will take effect only after the amount is deposited.<\/p>\n

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The Madras High Court, while hearing a dispute between a couple, said that a wife cannot be expected to follow her husband around like the pug dog in the Vodafone advertisement. The court said that a wife is not required to accompany her husband every time he moves to another place for work or other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[32752,32753,27625,32754,24880,32751,32750,30915],"class_list":["post-35774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation","tag-court-remark","tag-husband-wife-relation","tag-indian-judiciary","tag-legal-statement","tag-madras-high-court","tag-spousal-equality","tag-vodafone-ad","tag-wife-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/petrolnews.in\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}