The Domestic Violence Act becomes the first law that gives recognition legally to relationships outside marriage. This Act recognises the existence of non-marital adult heterosexual relationships. Before the same, a woman could only file complaints of domestic violence against her spouse if she was married to him.
What does this mean?
This redefines the definition of who can file a complaint under the Domestic Violence Act. Now according to the law, an “aggrieved person” is “any woman who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the respondent and who alleges to have been subjected to any act of domestic violence by the respondent.”
D Patchaiammal v D Velusamy, Supreme Court stated that
“If a man and woman are having a live-in relationship for an extensive period, they will be taken as a married couple in society.”
A new meaning to the term “domestic relationship”
A domestic relationship under the Act has been defined as “a relationship between two persons who live or have, at any point of time, lived together in a shared household, when they are related by consanguinity, marriage, or through a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption or are family members living together as a joint family and relations in the nature of marriage”.
This definition allows women protection in relationships between a woman and her husband, father, brother, other males and even female kin related through consanguinity or marriage.
The court’s verdict
In 2008, the government of Maharashtra attempted to amend Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code to broaden the definition of the term “wife” to include a woman who was living with a man “like his wife” for a reasonably long period in the definition.
This is further evident from the judgement delivered by the Apex Court (S Khushboo v Kanniammal & Anr, (2010).
In this judgement, the court held that –
“The scope of criminality in consensual adult relationships when they reiterated that while it is true that the mainstream view in our society is that sexual contact should take place only between marital partners, there is no statutory offence that takes place when adults willingly engage in sexual relations outside the marital setting, excluding ‘adultery’ as defined under Section 497 IPC.
It is thus obvious that non-marital relations have not had a criminal or “illegal” status in India insofar as they are not covered by the adultery law and insofar as the principle of presumption of marriage prevails.”
The court laid down certain conditions that had to prove live-in relationships.
“Relation in the nature of marriage” would mean that –
- The couple must hold themselves out to society as being akin to spouses,
- They must be of legal age to marry,
- They must be otherwise qualified to enter into a legal marriage, including being unmarried,
- They must have voluntarily cohabited and held themselves out to the world as being akin to spouses for a significant period of time.
Hence live-in relationships come under the ambit of domestic relationships as defined under the Act. This allows women to uphold their rights in intimate relationships that they share.