The Bombay High Court last week separately decided two issues while hearing petitions challenging Family Court orders in a divorce case. In one of the judgments, the Court frowned upon the tactics employed by husbands in order to shirk away from paying maintenance to their estranged wives. The two issues that were decided separately were firstly, whether the wife can stay at the matrimonial home pending divorce proceedings, and secondly, whether she is entitled to receive interim maintenance during the pendency of a petition for nullity of marriage filed by the husband. The single judge bench of Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi answered both these questions in the affirmative. The petitioner wife was represented by advocate Rajesh Dharap, while the respondent husband was represented by SR Dubey. The brief facts of the case are that the husband had filed a petition for a decree of nullity on the ground that his marriage with the petitioner-wife was null and void. In response, the wife stated that she was subjected to mental and physical torture by the husband and his family members, and was forced to leave her matrimonial home. Before the Family Court, she sought an interim injunction, restraining the respondent-husband and his family members from dispossessing her from her matrimonial home. The Family Court saw it fit to grant the injunction and directed the husband to allow the wife to stay at the home till further orders. However, this order was later lifted after the Family Court held that since the flat belonged to the father of the husband, and the husband was living elsewhere, the wife could not stay in what was her matrimonial home. While deciding the issue of whether the petitioner had the right to reside in her matrimonial home, the High Court noted that the Family Court had failed to take into account the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act. According to Justice Phansalkar-Joshi, the home in dispute would qualify as ‘shared household’ under Section 2(s) of the Act. Further, under Section 19 of the Act, the wife may not be disposed of the shared household, whether or not she has a legal or equitable interest in the same. “The question of title or proprietary right in the property is not at all of relevance, when the provisions of the D.V. Act; especially Section 19 thereof, are to be considered. As a matter of fact, it needs to be emphasized that…this D.V. Act was brought in the Statute Book with the specific and clear language and the unequivocal Clause that the ‘title of the husband or that of the family members to the said flat’, is totally irrelevant…” The Court went on to note that there was no evidence to suggest that the husband had actually moved out of the matrimonial home.