When Marriage Survives Only in Law: SC Invokes Art 142, Ends a Two-Decade-Old Dead Relationship

The decision of the Supreme Court of India in Jatinder Kumar v. Jeewan Lata, delivered on 18 December 2025, once again foregrounds the Court’s evolving approach to matrimonial disputes where the marriage has long ceased to exist in substance, even if it survives in law.

By dissolving a marriage of more than two decades under Article 142 of the Constitution, despite concurrent findings of the Trial Court and the High Court rejecting divorce on statutory grounds, the Court has reaffirmed that the constitutional power to do “complete justice” is meant precisely for situations where legal formalism risks perpetuating human suffering.

What's The Matter?

The parties were married in 2003, lived together briefly, and separated in 2005. Over the next twenty years, litigation followed a familiar trajectory: allegations of cruelty and neglect by the husband, denial by the wife, a failed attempt at restitution of conjugal rights, and ultimately a divorce petition that did not survive judicial scrutiny at the trial or appellate level.

What stands out is not the failure to prove cruelty or desertion in the strict statutory sense, but the sheer length of separation and the complete breakdown of the marital relationship, acknowledged even during the Court’s interaction with the parties.

What Court Said?

The Supreme Court’s reasoning reflects a pragmatic recognition that matrimonial law cannot be reduced to a mechanical application of statutory grounds when the marriage itself has become an empty shell.

The Court did not disturb the factual findings of the courts below on cruelty or desertion. Instead, it consciously stepped outside the confines of the Hindu Marriage Act to invoke Article 142, holding that continuation of such a marriage would serve no meaningful purpose and would only prolong the agony of both parties.

The emphasis was not on fault, but on reality: two individuals, living apart for nearly twenty years, with no possibility of reconciliation despite mediation efforts, cannot be compelled to remain bound by a legal fiction.

Equally significant is the Court’s handling of the question of permanent alimony.

Both parties were government school teachers, economically independent, yet the Court recognised that financial closure is integral to emotional and legal closure. While the husband offered ₹15 lakh as a one-time settlement, the Court enhanced the amount to ₹20 lakh, calibrating fairness not merely on income parity but on the long years of separation and the need to bring all claims to a definitive end.

By directing payment as a condition precedent to the drawing up of the decree of divorce, the Court ensured that the exercise of extraordinary constitutional power was tempered with equitable safeguards.

This judgment fits squarely within the Court’s broader jurisprudence on irretrievable breakdown of marriage, even though the ground remains absent from the statute book. Time and again, the Court has cautioned that Article 142 is not a substitute for legislative reform.

Yet, in cases such as this, it has also acknowledged that rigid adherence to statutory grounds can result in injustice when the marriage is dead beyond repair. The present decision reinforces that Article 142 is not invoked to dilute matrimonial law, but to humanise its application where the law, as it stands, is inadequate to address lived realities.

At a normative level, the ruling underscores a shift from adversarial fault-finding to a more restorative conception of matrimonial justice.

The Court was less concerned with who was right or wrong two decades ago, and more focused on whether the law should compel two individuals to remain married in name alone. In answering that question in the negative, the judgment strengthens the idea that dignity, autonomy, and finality are integral to justice in family law.

While the absence of a statutory provision on irretrievable breakdown continues to place the burden on constitutional adjudication, decisions like Jatinder Kumar illustrate how Article 142 functions as a necessary safety valve.

It allows the Supreme Court to bridge the gap between law and life, ensuring that the persistence of a legal bond does not become an instrument of continued hardship. In that sense, the judgment is less about dissolving a marriage, and more about reaffirming that the law exists to serve human ends, not to frustrate them.