The Madras High Court (Madurai Bench) thrashed the misconceived attempt by the petitioner’s (minor child) grandfather to disturb the respondent’s (erstwhile daughter-in-law) settled and peaceful family life, notwithstanding that the biological father of the minor, who is the petitioner’s own son, is alive, capable, and bound by his own undertaking in the mutual consent divorce decree to maintain the child.
The Court held that when the divorced parents have consciously agreed to a framework for the child’s custody and maintenance, that arrangement must be honoured. Any attempt by one family branch to use the child as an instrument to reopen past marital discord amounts to judicial harassment and undermines the principle of co-parenting through peaceful separation.
The Court pointed out that when the respondent (mother) had renounced any claim for maintenance from her husband, and both parties consented to dissolve their marriage by mutual consent, then the attempt by the petitioner’s grandfather to resurrect the issue of maintenance, by targeting the respondent, after years of her remarriage, runs contrary to the sanctity of that consent decree.
A Single Judge Bench of Justice L. Victoria Gowri observed that when the Family Court had rightly dismissed the petition filed under Section 125 CrPC, holding that the paternal grandfather, not being the natural guardian, had no locus standi to maintain a maintenance petition against his daughter in law, on behalf of the minor, in the absence of appointment as guardian by a competent Court.
The observation came while considering this case of the minor child who has been thrust into the vortex of litigation, not to protect his welfare, but as an instrument to vent the latent animosity of an embittered father-in-law against his divorced and peacefully remarried daughter-in-law. The Bench therefore held that the in-laws cannot intrude into the privacy of the separated couples by instituting repeated litigations under the pretext of child welfare when the legal guardian is alive and responsible.
The Bench highlighted that what ought to have been a matter of parental care has been converted into a tool of vengeance, where the estranged husband, instead of acting with responsibility, has chosen to act through his father, making his own minor son a mere pawn in their continuing matrimonial discord.
Briefly, after the marriage between the couple was officially dissolved through a mutual consent decree, the father was allotted the custody of the minor child because the mother renounced any claim of maintenance from her former husband in future. Following this mutual agreement, both parents remarried and have been living their own separate lives. The minor son has been raised by his paternal grandparents, and the father has been paying monthly maintenance for the child.
However, in the garb of disturbing the consent decree, the paternal grandfather approached the Family Court seeking maintenance under Section 125 CrPC against the divorced daughter-in-law. The Family Court, however, held that the paternal grandfather, who isn’t the natural guardian, didn’t have the right to file a maintenance petition for his minor grandson since he wasn’t appointed as a guardian by a competent court.
Appearances:
Advocate S. Prabhu, for the Petitioner
Advocate J. Barathan, for the Respondent
