Beyond Fault and Labels: SC Ends a Broken Marriage by Consent, Not Desertion

The judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Bhagyashree Bisi v. Animesh Padhee, reflects a careful yet humane recalibration of matrimonial adjudication, where the Court chose finality and dignity over rigid adherence to fault-based labels.

While the Family Court and the Orissa High Court had dissolved the marriage on the statutory ground of desertion under the Hindu Marriage Act, the Supreme Court consciously stepped in to alter the juridical basis of divorce, dissolving the marriage instead by mutual consent under Article 142 of the Constitution.

What's The Matter?

The parties married in 2014, lived together intermittently across jurisdictions, and gradually drifted apart amid allegations of hostility, financial demands, and competing professional obligations abroad.

Both parties unequivocally expressed their desire to bring the marriage to an end and agreed that continuation of the marital bond served no purpose. The wife, however, resisted the moral and legal stigma attached to a decree founded on desertion, asserting that her separation was driven by employment compulsions rather than abandonment.

What Court Said?

The Court’s response to this concern is doctrinally significant.

By setting aside the decree of divorce on the ground of desertion and substituting it with a dissolution by mutual consent under Article 142, the Court effectively decoupled the end of the marriage from an attribution of fault.

In doing so, it reaffirmed that constitutional power exists precisely to prevent the law from inflicting avoidable injustice, even where statutory requirements may technically stand satisfied.

Equally telling is the Court’s emphasis on irretrievable breakdown as a lived reality rather than a formal ground. The parties had lived apart for years, reconciliation efforts had failed, and both sides sought closure.

The judgment underscores that once the marriage is beyond repair, insistence on sustaining fault-based decrees risks perpetuating bitterness rather than resolving it. Article 142 thus operated as a corrective tool, allowing the Court to reshape the relief in a manner that better aligned with the parties’ present realities and mutual consent.

The determination of permanent alimony further reinforces the Court’s pragmatic approach. Acknowledging that both spouses were working professionals with independent means, the Court nonetheless recognised that financial settlement remains integral to comprehensive closure.

The direction to pay ₹25 lakhs as a one-time lump sum, described as a “token” yet substantial, reflects an attempt to balance economic parity with the need to conclusively end all matrimonial claims.

By linking the drawing up of the divorce decree to proof of payment, the Court ensured enforceability while preventing future disputes.

The shift away from sustaining contested fault findings, when both parties consent to separation, reflects a growing sensitivity to the reputational and emotional consequences of legal labels such as desertion.

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