Married women have right to live in estranged in-laws home: Supreme Court

Oct. 16: In a big win for married women who are mistreated or tortured at their in-laws’, the top court has observed that the wife would have the right to claim the “shared household” of the joint family under the Domestic Violence Act. A woman can stay in her husband’s family home even if she is estranged from him, the Supreme Court said while overruling its earlier decision to the contrary.

A three-judge bench headed by justice Ashok Bhushan passed the landmark ruling while considering the petition of a septuagenarian couple from Delhi who filed a civil suit to dispossess their daughter-in-law even as the proceedings initiated by her under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, was ongoing.

Notably, Section 17(1) of the Domestic violence Act states that every woman in a domestic relationship will have the legal right to reside in a shared household, regardless of her title or beneficial interest in it. Shared household refers to property owned by a woman’s husband, or by the joint family of which the husband is a member. This does not include self-acquired property of any family member.