Case Story: When the Marriage Ends but the Cases Don’t: M’s Eight-Year Struggle

Years were lost to paperwork and waiting rooms. But today, she has closure, courage, and a quiet kind of justice.

In 2022, M found us outside Tis Hazari Court. She was visibly distressed, and one of our team members—present for a different matter—stopped to listen. She explained that her legal battle had started in 2017, and despite five years of fighting, nothing had moved forward.

When we began reviewing her documents, we realised the scale of what she’d been navigating—a Domestic Violence petition, a Maintenance application, a 498A criminal case, and a divorce case filed by her husband.

Between 2017 and 2022, M was represented by a Legal Aid Counsel appointed by the Delhi Legal Services Authority (DLSA). Unfortunately, the counsel did not appear regularly. As a result, in the divorce case filed by the husband, M was proceeded ex parte—an order passed without hearing her side.

One of our first steps was to file an application to set aside the ex parte order, and the court accepted it. Ironically, once the order was reversed and M got a fair chance to respond, it was the husband who stopped appearing—and eventually, the divorce petition he had filed was dismissed for non-prosecution.

In 2018, the court had fixed M’s interim maintenance at ₹5,000. But by the time the final maintenance hearing came up in 2023, it had already been five years. The presiding judge at the time didn’t allow arguments on the final application and simply reiterated the same interim amount of ₹5,000—despite us placing detailed evidence on record. In a decade of legal practice, few judicial experiences have felt as arbitrary.

M didn’t want to appeal. After five years of waiting, she was emotionally and financially exhausted. She was also trying to arrange her younger sister’s wedding and hoped for a resolution.

In the 498A criminal case and the domestic violence case, trial was just about to begin when, in August 2024, the matter was finally settled through judicial intervention. The settlement amount was ₹6 lakh—a modest sum after years of litigation, but it brought M some closure.

Today, the divorce is final, the cases are closed, and the last instalment of the settlement is due through a court-monitored caution petition. The domestic violence case is ready for withdrawal.

M’s marriage didn’t last nearly as long as the litigation that followed. What should have been a fresh chapter in her life became a prolonged struggle that consumed her youth, energy, and peace of mind.

Yet through it all, she endured. Quietly. Firmly.

₹6 lakh may not seem like much, but to M, it is the cost of peace. We only hope it helps her begin again—with the dignity that was always hers, and the freedom she fought for every day of the last eight years.