Indian Divorce law... A fresh perspective

Laws in India are meant to make it difficult for couples to divorce, they seemingly feel that a marriage can be preserved by making it difficult to break free from it. In most developed countries, divorce is seen as a part of life, and they have laws that ensure your protection and convenience when an unfortunate event as divorce happens in your life. Unfortunately, in India, divorce is still seen as taboo, and a divorced person is seen as a foresaken person in society. What makes is hard, is that the society starts judging the divorced person negatively, counting faults of each person in the relationship. It is still a far-fetched cry for the Indina society to understand that divorce may not necessarily be the result of one person's fault, sometimes, we make mistakes, and sometimes we screw up. What is important to understand is that when a relationship reaches a point of no return, it is better to separate, and let positive feelings again flow into your life.Unfortunately, Indian law does not allow that to happen. Here you cannot correct your mistakes.If you screw up, you are done for life. First the law makes it really difficult to break free of a bad marriage, and during the divorce, the society shuns you , like you have cancer. After that, when you do break free of a bad relationship, you are judged as "something must be wrong with him, that is why he got divorced" thinking.Indian society is not very forgiving of divorce, and tries to place faults on one person or the other to justify a divorce. Sometimes it is nobody's fault, sometimes it's everybody's fault, whatever may be the case, why waste lifetime fighting about who's fault is it. Even if we find who's fault it is, is that person going to admit that it's his fault and fix it? What if he does not want to fix it? what option do you have? You cannot turn one person into another person. We are all born different.We can adjust for people we love, but we can't change.We are what we are, though we may change our behaviour for a little while. The fact is that Indina Justice system is very unforgiving of a mistake. If you make the mistake once, it makes it immensely difficult for people to fix it, and lead normal lives.When couples go through divorce, one of the spouse may become vindictive, and goes all out to destroy the other person. Such a person is not concerned about his own loss of time, money ,prestige, but is concerned more about the loss of the other party's dignity, money and time. Such destructive spouses and create havoc in the present judicial system in India. The justice is very slow, and the court cases drag on for years. Indian courts do not take into account the harassment caused by the court process itself. Even if someone files a false allegation on you, you still have to go to court, and prove your innocence.Typically, when a party has nothing better to do with their time, they file lots of baseless cases against the other party, just to cause harassment. Indian courts still do not grant the divorce. To get a divorce granted, you have to either prove cruelty of other party on you, or it has to be mutual divorce. Having a conditional divorce system in India is a cause of harassment, and allegations in India. When parties go to an extent of never return, the divorce should be immediately granted to relieve that pain, and render justice.Courts should not try to play god by making it difficult for people to divorce, since this is a change in society which is taking place at a very rapid rate. By making it difficult to divorce, the court is uselessly trying to keep our culture intact, when infact, a society cannot be changed by making strict rules, or by making things difficult. People will have more harassment, and more people will get harassed, but it is not going to stop the society from changing. It is a natural progression of a society, which cannot be stopped by making strict rules. rather when society changes, rules should be changed to keep up with the changing circumstances of people. After all laws are made to ensure the interests, peace and prosperity of citizens, rather than to force them to think, and live in a certain manner. Change in society is inevitable, and the Indian justice system needs to play catch up with the changing society. Indian Justice system needs to change the laws for divorce to no fault divorce, so that when people have reached a point of no return, they do not get on each other's nerves, trying to kill the other person, rather they can separate amicably, and move on with their lives. Not making the divorce a no fault divorce, is like asking someone to make allegations on the other spouse , and not giving them the option to separate as friends. If the marriage has reached the point of no return, and both spouses refuse to budge from their point of view, counselling should be adviced for three months, and if that is not successful, the fighting couple should be granted a divorce. If they couples do not see eye to eye with each other, there is little chance that they will agree together even for a mutual divorce. The point is , they can't agree on anything, how can they agree on even the way to get a divorce, the court should consider the disagreements,and rivalry between couples as a sign of no return, and take the correct stand to grant them a divorce. No point asking people to prove allegations on each other, this is too childish, and in a way our justice system is promoting the unrest and bitterness between the divorcing couples, which is contrary to the reason for which the matrimonial laws and courts are made.

On your guard when dealing with divorce lawyers

Indian divorce is a bitter pill that you will have to swallow if you end up being in this situation.I totally sympathesize with you. The idea of divorce is disheartening itself, and the Indian Judicial infrastructure makes it even more difficult to bear.There are lawyers that are clueless, and have set way in which they will ask you to proceed, they do not understand that every case is different, and do not want to do the effort of really knowing your situation. They have cookie-cutter divorce procedures which they will hand out to you, and you will have to carve out your divorce from that only. Incompetent lawyers will many times land you in precarious situations. So be on your guard always, and make sure that you get second opinion after your lawyer's advice. Some lawyer's are so unscruplous, that they will take money from the opposite party, and ask you to sign on statements saying you have comromised, and you have nothing agaisnt husband,when you have actually not compromised yet, or worse , on blank sheets of paper. Never do it. How ever much they may pressurise you. They will back down eventually. Tell firmly that you will not write anything that you have not agreed to. even when you sign statements, make sure you cross out the blank area, so that it is not misused later for adding more statements.
Another tactic that lawyers play is to get you in deep mess first, and then charge lot of money to get you released on bail.
Trust your inner gut feeling, and always seek second, third, and fourth opinion before taking any major decision. Do not reveal everything to your lawyer either. It goes against conventional wisdom, but it is a practical advice that I have learnt after paying a big price. You learn from other's mistake. Tell only that which is relevant to your case. You never know in what ways and form the information gets leaked to the other party.
Make sure that you hire a sensible lawyer. Most lawyers do not want your case to settle, because you are a source of their pension and employment. Even though the lawyer is charging lumpsum for the case, he still will be getting more money from you for photocopy, getting copies of judgement, more counter cases that come out of your litigation. It is very common for lawyers to incite you to file more and more counter cases on your spouse, and get you into a big battle. Do not always agree blindly, think what will you get out of all the drama.. If it is worth it, go for it, but my suggestion is to stay away from expensive lengthy court battles as much as possible, and concentrate your energies on constructive things in life. Nobody comes out laughing from a divorce, except for the divorce lawyer !