Legal Question in Family Law in India
My daughter was married 4 years back as per Hindu rituals and the marriage was registered. Now my daughter and her husband have been living separately for past 3 years. She is living and working in India while he is living and working in the USA. 3 years back he was on H1B visa and his citizenship was being processed (current residency status unknown). Last year his family reached out to us asking for mutual divorce. Since every effort from our side for reconciliation had failed, we agreed for a mutual divorce. Also we aren't asking for any financial support.
When we hired a lawyer and the process had to start, we started facing problems (summarized as below):
1. He refused to come down to India, so our lawyer suggested he can give power of attorney to his family member, which should be stamped by the consulate.
2. When we communicated him the same, he made an excuse saying that he doesn’t have time to visit the consulate.
3. When we asked him to get the stamping done by sending the required documents through post to the consulate, he refused saying that he isn’t comfortable sending his passport through post and asked us to file the petition with a notarized GPA without stamping from consulate.
4. Our lawyer mentioned that the petition won’t be accepted without stamping from consulate. On the other hand, he keeps repeating that consulate stamping is not required (apparently he had consulted with some lawyer). So we asked him to hire his own lawyer (who as per him can get the petition filed without consulate stamping) but he won’t hire a lawyer and keeps on insisting that our lawyer should file the petition with GPA document which isn’t stamped by consulate.
Not sure but from his attitude, it seems that he is avoiding visiting the consulate for some reason. So our lawyer suggested we file for a contested divorce and if he doesn’t contest, we shall be able to get an ex-parte divorce.
I have a few questions:
1. How long does it take to get an ex-parte divorce?
2. How to send notice to him since he is in the USA?
3. Can an ex-parte divorce be contested in future by him and if so, for how long can he do so?
4. Also, we aren’t looking for any financial support but would like him to return the jewelries he has of my daughter. His family had earlier asked us not to mention anything about jewelry in the mutual divorce petition and we had agreed (his family said that they would return the jewelry before the first motion). Now if we go for contested divorce, will it be a good idea to mention about the jewelries in the petition?
1 Answer from Attorneys
in your situation, the best would be that he send a power of attorney in favour of is relative or friend duly attested by indian consulate/notary public. In case he is not co operating, then the petition of divorce may be filed and the summons can be served through HAGUE office situated in Delhi and USA. Once divorce is filed on fault ground, you may mention all the stridhan and claim maintenance, alimony etc.
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