Bombay HC allows woman to question Father’s second marriage

The Bombay High Court recently held that a daughter could question the validity of her father’s second marriage in court.

A division bench of Justices R.D. Dhanuka and V.G. Bisht on Wednesday struck down the Family Court’s order that only a wife or husband should question its validity in court, as the marriage is between two persons.

A woman has filed a lawsuit challenging the Family Court’s ruling on the validity of her father’s second marriage after her 66-year-old mother died. The Bombay High Court, which heard the petition, ruled that she had the power to question her father’s second marriage as a daughter.

In 2016, a woman went to family court questioning the validity of her father’s second marriage. Her father remarried after her mother died in 2003. After the death of her father in 2016, she learned her stepmother had married him without divorcing her first husband.

She went to court questioning how her marriage without a divorce could be valid as her stepmother was enjoying all of her father’s assets. However, in the family court, the second wife argued that the marriage was for two people and how could the daughter question its validity. The family court ruled in favour of the second wife. The daughter challenged the case in the Bombay High Court, where she got relief.