Chennai High Court steps in to speed up family court cases

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CHENNAI: R Bhuvaneswari was yet to be born when her mother R Sumathi was driven out of her matrimonial home in Villivakkam. Next week the girl will celebrate her seventh birthday, but the worried mother is fighting a divorce case in a family court in Chennai, and is still chasing a proper maintenance without any success.

Like Sumathi, scores of divorce applicants have been running between their homes and courts for several years with their cases proceeding at a snail’s pace, say lawyers dealing with family court cases.

The latest trend is to approach the Madras high court, and obtain a direction to the family court to complete the case proceedings within a time frame. “Sumathi too approached the high court, and Justice M Duraiswamy had ordered the II additional family court in Chennai to dispose of the maintenance claims before July 31,” said her counsel R Y George Williams, adding that he alone had six such clients who had obtained such orders from high court. “In addition to family court proceedings, they fight another round of litigation just to get their cases expedited,” he says.

Women seek judicial separation after facing several forms of cruelty at the hands of their spouses and in-laws. It is unfair to delay payment of maintenance to them, said Chennai family courts advocates association president and former special public prosecutor for human rights court V Kannadasan. “The worst-affected are women with no independent source of income. Delay by courts defeats the very object of the legislation, which seeks to ensure that the woman’s living standard and status in society are not adversely affected by the matrimonial dispute or its result,” he told TOI.

Long adjournments, sometimes by even a couple of months, frustrate clients, men and women, said advocate and Congress functionary Sudha.

George Williams said Sumathi was married in February 2007 and she fell out with her husband within five months after the wedding. The child was born in June 2008, and she filed for divorce in March 2010 after she was repeatedly staying from entering her matrimonial house. Since then the case has been suffering lengthy adjournments, and she is yet to get anything as maintenance. “Delayed disposal of matrimonial cases, at times, would be crueler than the marital cruelty itself,” he said.