Divorce cases may be fought on video in future rather than in crowded courtrooms amidst strangers.
The Supreme Court said, in modern times, couples lead hectic work and personal lives with hardly any child care or family support. So, a Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit has, in a recent judgment, asked High Courts to pass administrative directions to district and lower courts to open up their videoconferencing facilities so that couples engaged in matrimonial cases need not travel distances, probably even to other States, to personally attend their divorce hearings.
The Supreme Court said videoconferencing would spare couples the drudgery of coming to courts in person, waiting for hours, probably days, to testify.
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The jurisdiction
The court noted that a divorce case is usually filed in a court within which jurisdiction the husband lives or the wife lives or where the couple had their matrimonial home. In most cases, estranged couples may very well go their separate ways, probably to other States.
The Supreme Court found that the odds are usually stacked against the estranged husband when the wife prefers a transfer of the matrimonial proceedings to a court in her vicinity. When such a transfer application comes up, the courts either order the husband to foot the wife’s travel and accommodation expenses or mechanically allow her plea.
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Three factors
The judiciary justifies that this empathy towards women are based on three factors – the constitutional scheme to provide women equal access to justice, the power of the State to make special provisions for women and children and duty to uphold the dignity of women.
However, this judgment does not fully agree with the idea of courts “mechanically” transferring cases to the wife’s place of abode.
Justice Goel, who wrote the verdict for the Bench, said it was time courts also considered a man’s genuine difficulties.