Your children need you both, Supreme Court tells estranged couples

Justice Kurian Joseph conveys the court’s dismay at how family splits psychologically affect children.

Witness to many a ‘no-holds-barred’ court battle between couples for child custody, the Supreme Court has found that the time is ripe to give “parental advice” to young and estranged couples whose children find their future crushed between the walls built by their parents.

“After all, the child needs both father and mother,” a Bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton Nariman said in a recent judgment on a plea by a separated couple over the custody of their young daughter.

Justice Joseph, who authored the judgment, conveyed the court’s dismay and alarm at how family splits would psychologically affect children and the impact it would have on society.

“We only want to remind both father and mother that they may fight endlessly, but the one person who is sandwiched, disturbed, pained, shocked, and if not spoiled, is their daughter,” he said.

The verdict said parents should, instead of highlighting their differences (some reconcilable and others beyond repair), pay premium to the future of their children and the harm an ugly custodial battle would cause to the child.

“If the future of the daughter is kept in mind by both the father and the mother, they will think of dissociating themselves from all other differences between them,” Justice Joseph said.

Hoping that the parents in would reach a workable solution, the court left it to the family court concerned to hear them and work out an amicable, long-term settlement. For the period of the divorce proceedings before the family court, the Bench gave the child’s custody to the father on the first three Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting from the first week of April, 2016.

It said the parents could seek the help of the family court for custody during vacations.