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Wife ordered to pay back Rs 20 lakh to husband

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In short

Under a September 2020 settlement agreement, the wife accepted an initial Rs 20 lakh installment along with her istri dhan articles out of an agreed Rs 40 lakh total. She then refused to record her statement for the second motion, claiming she neither wished to live with her husband nor divorce him, while launching fresh criminal and maintenance cases against him. Justice Krishna dismissed her claims that the husband violated terms by pursuing child custody and categorized her subsequent domestic violence litigation as an abuse of process. The woman must now return the initial funds within six weeks due to her deliberate failure to honor court undertakings.

Key points

  • Litigants cannot retain settlement funds if they deliberately back out of recorded mutual…: Litigants cannot retain settlement funds if they deliberately back out of recorded mutual consent divorce commitments.
  • Launching fresh domestic violence claims after accepting divorce settlement money constit…: Launching fresh domestic violence claims after accepting divorce settlement money constitutes an abuse of the judicial process.
  • Seeking child custody does not violate mutual consent settlement terms unless explicitly…: Seeking child custody does not violate mutual consent settlement terms unless explicitly barred by the underlying agreement.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

Can a wife take the settlement amount in a mutual divorce case and still decline to go ahead with the divorce? The Delhi High Court recently pronounced an order in a similar case where the wife took the settlement amount from her husband and yet refused to complete the divorce.

It so happened that the couple was married and had a minor child. However, they sought to dissolve their marriage and signed a settlement to divorce by mutual consent on 01.09.2020. As part of this, the wife was to receive Rs 40 lakh in total - Rs 20 lakh at the first motion and the rest at the second motion.

On 22.09.2020, the first motion was accepted by the Family Court (Dwarka) and the wife got Rs 20 lakh. The second motion was presented around a month later, but the couples’ statements were never recorded.

Despite this, she filed a maintenance petition even after receiving Rs 20 lakh from him along with her istri dhan articles. Additionally, Mrs Khurana also filed a criminal complaint and a domestic violence case. As…

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