Cruelty: the ground most cases run on
Cruelty is conduct of such a character that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to live with the respondent. It covers physical violence, but the great majority of pleaded cases concern mental cruelty: sustained humiliation, false allegations, desertion of responsibility, financial deprivation, or persistent conduct that makes the marriage unendurable.
What courts want is specificity. A petition asserting that a spouse was "cruel and harassing" achieves very little. A petition setting out dated incidents, with corroboration where it exists (messages, medical records, complaints made at the time, witnesses) is a different proposition entirely.
The other statutory grounds
Each has distinct ingredients, and pleading the wrong one is a common and costly error.
Every ground, with its section
Leprosy was removed as a ground in 2019. Everything else below is live law, and a petition has to name the right clause: courts do not substitute one ground for another if the facts were pleaded under the wrong one.
| Ground | Section | What has to be proved |
|---|---|---|
| Adultery | 13(1)(i) | Voluntary intercourse with someone other than the spouse, after the marriage. |
| Cruelty | 13(1)(ia) | Physical or mental conduct that makes it unreasonable to expect you to live together. |
| Desertion | 13(1)(ib) | At least two continuous years, without reasonable cause or consent, with intent to end cohabitation. |
| Conversion | 13(1)(ii) | The spouse has ceased to be Hindu by converting to another religion. |
| Mental disorder | 13(1)(iii) | Of a kind and degree that you cannot reasonably be expected to live with. Needs medical evidence. |
| Venereal disease | 13(1)(v) | In a communicable form. |
| Renunciation | 13(1)(vi) | The spouse has renounced the world by entering a religious order. |
| Presumption of death | 13(1)(vii) | Not heard of as alive for seven years by those who would have heard. |
| No resumption after a decree | 13(1A) | One year or more without resuming cohabitation after judicial separation, or without restitution after a restitution decree. Open to either spouse. |
| Wife's additional grounds | 13(2) | Including the husband's bigamy, rape or bestiality, and no cohabitation for a year after a maintenance order. |
Two Supreme Court decisions most petitions lean on
Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007). The Supreme Court set out an illustrative list of conduct that can amount to mental cruelty, including sustained humiliation, a refusal of marital relations for a long period without good reason, and long separation after which the marriage has plainly broken down. Courts across India still rely on it when mental cruelty is argued.
Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan (2023). A Constitution Bench confirmed that the Supreme Court can dissolve a marriage on irretrievable breakdown under Article 142, and can dispense with the six-month waiting period. It is the Supreme Court's own power: a Family Court cannot grant divorce on breakdown alone.
Irretrievable breakdown: the ground that is not one
Despite widespread belief, irretrievable breakdown of marriage is not a ground under the Hindu Marriage Act. Law Commission reports have recommended adding it; Parliament has not done so.
The Supreme Court has, however, dissolved marriages on that basis in the exercise of its own powers under Article 142, where the marriage was beyond repair and the parties had been separated for many years. That is a remedy available from the Supreme Court, not something a Family Court can grant: which is why, in practice, long-separated couples are better served by converting to a consent petition than by waiting for a breakdown ground.