Lifestyle - Desperate Divorces

Outside the family court in Mumbai, it's not uncommon to see grimacing men and women shouting abuses at their spouses, or bringing flowers for their lawyers, in the hope that this will somehow relieve them of their extended ordeal sooner. In a country where divorce proceedings often go on longer than the marriage, irrational hope is the order of the day.

As are desperate measures. Take the enterprising man in Kolkata who recently decided to get a divorce by mutual consent without the mutualness—his wife remained blissfully unaware. Sanjib Saha brought a fake wife to the Lok Adalat and managed to get a divorce from the real one quite effortlessly. Of course, he is now facing legal action, and his divorce was suspended after his real wife complained last week. But his guts fail to surprise hard-nosed divorce lawyers, who claim he has some high-profile precedents—like the relative of a high-profile UP politician and a hockey player from Lucknow who took a burqa- clad woman to court and obtained a divorce.

In recent years, such instances have been curtailed, with lawyers insisting on wedding photographs, marriage certificates, invitation cards and other documents of identity. However, even these documents are accepted by the courts on the basis of that intangible seal called faith. "It's always possible that the 'wife' and 'husband' have decked up, garlanded themselves, gone to a nearby studio and created a wedding set-up," says a Mumbai lawyer.

Such reckless tactics on the part of couples are something family court lawyers are familiar with. The most commonly played "mischief", according to lawyer Shilpi Shyamani, is that of misuing the ex-parte order. This order, which is often used as a tool by husbands to get rid of illiterate wives, is a one-sided case where the judge passes a ruling if the other party does not appear in court on two consecutive occasions. Here, the basic requirement is to show a separation period of one year. In order to show proof of separation, the applicant furnishes a fake address of the wife, where the legal notice is sent.

In the most likely event of no response, it is then required that the applicant publish the notice in a newspaper, summoning the other party. This notice, of course, is conveniently printed in a marginal newspaper. Mumbai lawyer Tara Hegde knew of a businessman in Mumbai who lived with his wife for ten years after having sought divorce from her through an ex-parte order, without her knowledge. It was when the wife decided to call it a day that she realised he had divorced her long ago "to avoid any property issues".

Another favourite weapon of most unhappy couples is manipulation, especially since the law places a great premium on tangible evidence. Their desperation often translates into what advocate Tejas Bhatt likes to call acts of human ingenuity. He once had a client whose wife maintained a diary where she recorded only her husband's acts of cruelty on every page in crisp one-liners like "Today, he slapped me".

Another client, a 28-year-old woman, was charged by her husband with adultery. In court, his parents presented a long taped conversation, where they asked the woman embarrassing questions and made insidious suggestions to which she 'admitted'. What the husband and his parents had done, says Bhatt, was to take her voice sample and reproduce it with the help of software which dubbed answers given by someone else in the girl's voice. "After the divorce, the girl came to me and said she wanted to take up a course in voice editing because of what happened to her," he recalls.

Even in divorce by mutual consent, which takes a period of six months, some couples promise to pay the lawyer double his or her fee or fudge the date of separation in order to bail themselves out sooner. Though it normally takes six months to get a divorce by mutual consent, the period can be waived, say some lawyers. Shyamani knows of a prominent Bollywood actor who was so sure of the date of his divorce that he planned his next wedding accordingly. The actor got his divorce within two months of filing it, and got married the very next day.

Although most lawyers try to dissuade warring couples in the belief that even the worst reconciliation is better than a divorce, they are often forced to throw their hands up. Superior forces like God or "even the Supreme Court" cannot stop them, says Chennai lawyer Mohan Subramaniam philosophically.

Subramaniam once tried to advise a well-placed software professional who complained that his wife spent too much on phone calls among other things. The lawyer told him that if such minor things bothered him, it meant he did not love her totally. But the software professional's reply stumped him totally. "Sir, please don't underestimate my love. I had undergone vasectomy before marriage, so that I could focus all my attention on her. But she talks too much on the phone."