No Divorce, No Maintenance: Allahabad HC's Message to Woman in Second Relationship

The Allahabad High Court has held that a woman cannot claim maintenance under Section 125 CrPC from a man she lived with, since her first marriage was never legally dissolved. In Madhu @ Aruna Bhajpai v. State of U.P., Justice Madan Pal Singh ruled that her earlier divorce petition was dismissed in default, so her first marriage subsisted, making the later marriage void under Section 11 of the Hindu Marriage Act. Distinguishing Badshah v. Urmila Badshah Godse (2014), the Court said cohabitation and Aadhaar/passport records could not cure the statutory bar, and dismissed her plea.

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No Divorce, No Deal: Allahabad HC Says Woman Can't Claim Maintenance From Man She 'Married' While Still Wed To Another

Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has ruled that a woman cannot claim maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) from a man she lived with as his wife, if her first marriage was never legally dissolved. A bench of Justice Madan Pal Singh dismissed a revision petition filed by the woman, upholding a family court's refusal to grant her maintenance.

The case, Madhu @ Aruna Bhajpai v. State of U.P. & Anr., arose after the woman's application before the Family Court, Kanpur Nagar, was rejected on the ground that she did not qualify as a “wife” under Section 125 CrPC. Records showed she had filed for divorce from her first husband under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, but that petition was dismissed in default and no decree was ever passed. Her first marriage, therefore, continued to subsist in law even as she went on to live with the respondent for several years, during which she was listed as his wife in official documents including her Aadhaar card and passport, and was socially recognised as such.

The High Court held that since her earlier marital tie was never severed by a court decree, any subsequent marriage ceremony with the respondent was void under Section 11 of the Hindu Marriage Act, and could not confer the legal status of husband and wife. “Void marriages... confer no spousal rights, including maintenance,” the Court observed, adding that divorce can only be granted through a competent court's decree and not through private arrangements, family settlements, or notarised agreements.

The Court distinguished the case from Badshah v. Urmila Badshah Godse (2014), where the Supreme Court had extended maintenance protection to a woman kept unaware of her husband's subsisting marriage. Here, by contrast, the woman herself had admitted her earlier marriage was still legally alive and had personally initiated the failed divorce proceedings. The equitable reasoning in Badshah, the Court said, could not be stretched to cover a claimant who knowingly entered a second relationship without first securing a divorce.

Rejecting the argument that long-term cohabitation and social acknowledgment should count for something, the Court held that neither can cure what the law treats as a statutory bar. “Long cohabitation or social recognition does not cure statutory illegality,” it noted, warning that expanding Section 125 CrPC to cover such relationships would dilute both the provision's welfare purpose and the sanctity of marriage as an institution.

The ruling reaffirms a consistent judicial position: Section 125 CrPC exists to prevent destitution among legally wedded wives, children, and parents, and courts cannot read an expansive definition of “wife” into the provision where doing so would override express statutory prohibitions under personal law. With no divorce decree ever passed, the Court concluded, the woman's claim to maintenance from the respondent as his “wife” was rightly rejected by the Family Court.