The Supreme Court observed that a woman has the right to reside at the houses of her mother as well as her mother-in-law, and nobody holds the authority to throw her out, just because they have a disliking for her.
“Sending away a woman just because you cannot stand her face will not be allowed by this court. This attitude of throwing out women from their matrimonial homes because of certain matrimonial squabbles is cracking up families,” said a bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and B V Nagarathna.
However, the bench clarified that if the woman is misbehaving “then conditions can be put by court not to trouble the elders and family members in matrimonial homes.”
The case was of a woman who filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against a Bombay High Court that ordered her and her husband to leave the house of her father-in-law. The HC had also ordered them to pay her in-laws monthly maintenance. The Bombay HC had ordered the son to provide another accommodation to his wife and children but waived off maintenance.
Hearing the woman’s plea, the SC bench asserted the woman’s right to residence at her in-laws’ house. Justice Nagarathna cited her own judgement earlier this month in another case and said, “A woman in a domestic relationship who is not aggrieved, in the sense that who has not been subjected to an act of domestic violence, has a right to reside in a shared household. Thus, a mother, daughter, sister, wife, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law or such other categories of women in a domestic relationship have the right to reside in a shared household dehors a right, title or beneficial interest in the same.”