Family, Matrimonial & Succession

This hub covers matrimonial, maintenance, custody and succession work, drafted for the Family Courts of Delhi and Maharashtra and for the civil and testamentary side where a succession matter requires it. The documents run from a divorce petition or a written statement to a mutual-consent petition and the settlement deed that has to hold after it, and from a maintenance application to a petition for probate or letters of administration.

In a contested matrimonial petition the ground pleaded governs what has to be proved, and a petition that recites cruelty or desertion without particulars gives the other side an easy answer and the court very little to act on. Dates, incidents and the period relied on are pleaded specifically. Where the parties have reached terms instead, the drafting problem moves to the settlement deed: what is being given up, what is payable and when, what happens on default, and whether the terms are in a form the court hearing the petition can actually record.

A mutual-consent petition is drafted with both motions in view rather than only the first, because the statutory interval between them, and whether a waiver of that interval should be sought, changes how the petition and the supporting affidavits are framed. Terms that are agreed between the parties but never put in a form the court can act on are the usual reason a consent matter comes apart at the second motion.

Maintenance is often the part of a matrimonial dispute that is fought hardest, and the same claim can lie under more than one provision at the same time, under section 144 of the BNSS, under sections 24 and 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act, and under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act. Which provision is invoked, and before which forum, affects what interim relief is available and how quickly it can be obtained, so the choice is made deliberately rather than by habit. Income and expenditure are pleaded from the material actually available rather than asserted at a round figure, since a figure without a foundation invites the court to substitute its own.

Work under the Domestic Violence Act is drafted for the specific reliefs the statute provides rather than as a general complaint, and defence work in a cruelty prosecution under section 498A of the Penal Code, or its successor provision in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, is prepared with whatever matrimonial proceeding is running in parallel firmly in view, because the two records are read against each other. In custody, guardianship and visitation matters the welfare of the child governs, and the drafting is kept temperate for that reason: pleadings written to wound are read by the court as evidence of the atmosphere the child is living in.

On the succession side the hub drafts wills, codicils and family settlements, and the petitions for probate, letters of administration and heirship that follow when an instrument is disputed or a title depends on it. Whether probate is necessary at all, or merely prudent, turns on where the property lies and how the will was made, and in some territories it is a precondition to establishing a right as executor or legatee rather than a matter of choice. Partition and inheritance disputes are drafted with the devolution worked out on the facts, including the position of daughters in coparcenary property, rather than taken from the family's own account of who is entitled to what.

The record in these matters is personal, and it is handled on that footing. Access is limited to those working the brief and the papers are used only for it. PrecedentIQ does not deal with the litigant: it takes no vakalatnama, holds no client relationship and appears in no proceeding, so an approach from a party is referred back to the instructing advocate. Citations and statutory references are checked against the primary source before a draft is returned, and the instructing advocate reviews and signs off before anything is filed or used. Fees follow a reading of the papers, as set out on Engagement & Fees.