Is refusal of mental illness therapy ground for divorce?

Is refusal of mental illness therapy ground for divorce?

TNN | Mar 5, 2022, 04.28 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Can wife’s non-acknowledgement of her schizophrenia and alleged refusal to get psychiatric treatment be termed cruelty and entitle husband to get divorce under an over 150-year-old law governing dissolution of Christian marriages?

A Supreme Court bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose agreed to examine this question posed by advocate Vipin Nair on behalf of a woman, whose marriage to a man was annulled by the Kerala high court despite it granting custody of the couple’s two daughters and agreeing with the trial court that she did not suffer from unsound mind.

The couple married in 2001 as per Christian rites and had two daughters in 2002 and 2009. The husband filed for divorce under Indian Divorce Act, 1869, in the year 2012. A family court said the woman left the matrimonial home in February 2011, hence no case was made out for grant of divorce on the ground of desertion. It also rejected divorce on the ground of unsoundness of mind of the wife, finding nothing wrong with the wife’s mental condition. The HC agreed with these two findings of the family court.

However, it agreed with the family court’s finding that the husband was entitled to divorce on the ground of cruelty as she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

The HC noted the SC rulings that divorce cannot be granted merely for the reason of suffering of Schizophrenia. But, it differentiated the case in hand and said, “this court (the HC) cannot ignore the fact that the woman refused to acknowledge having illness. She was also not prepared to undergo treatment and come out of such illness, even though she is mentally sound.”

“She can very well identify her problem. In fact, the doctor diagnosed her problem. But still she refused to acknowledge and undergo treatment. In such circumstances, the husband cannot be forced to live with a spouse who refused to undergo treatment,” the HC said.

Nair argued before Justice Saran-led bench that said that if the so-called refusal of wife to undergo psychiatric treatment, even when it was found that she did not suffer from unsoundness of mind, becomes a valid ground for dissolution of marriage, this could become a ruse for the husbands refusing to take care of their wives to seek divorce. The bench issued notice to the husband and sought his response in six weeks.