A division bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Neena Bansal of  Delhi High Court, while granting divorce to a woman, has ruled that financial instability of a spouse is bound to result in mental anxiety to the wife and comes under the ambit of ‘mental cruelty’.

“In the present case, it is easy to decipher the mental trauma as the appellant [wife] was working and the respondent [husband] was not working. There was a huge disparity in the financial status of the appellant and the respondent. The endeavours of the respondent to be able to sustain himself had admittedly failed,” said the bench.

The divorce petition was filed by a woman challenging a family’s court order for dismissing her petition.

According to the woman, the couple got married in the year 1989, after two years of the marriage, the couple parted their ways. Woman alleged that at the time of their marriage, the parent’s of the husband stated that their son had a good financial status and they owned a two and a half-storied bungalow.

After the marriage, woman came to known that her husband was not even a graduate and jobless.

Woman further stated that she had suffered cruelty and desertion for more than 2 years from her husband after which she filed a divorce petition.

The court noted that the parties have been living separately since the year 1998 and this proves that they were unable to sustain their matrimonial relationship “For a couple to be deprived of each each other’s company and of conjugal relationship can be interpreted only as amounting to mental cruelty”.

After considering the submissions, the bench granted divorce to a woman on the ground of mental cruelty and desertion.