Hindus now have to wait 90 days to appeal family court divorce decree, rules Bombay HC

MUMBAI: A warring Hindu couple now has 90 days, not 30, to file an appeal against a divorce decree granted by a family court, a full bench of the Bombay high court has held.

The court ruling lays to rest divided verdicts, and means that a Hindu man or woman would now have to wait three months after a divorce decree to remarry. Provided, of course, that within this time, the losing spouse has not already challenged the dissolution of marriage and the appeal is pending.

The three-judge bench comprising Justices Naresh Patel, R D Dhanuka and Sadhana Jadhav held that time to file an appeal has to read harmoniously when provisions in two different laws were different and conflicting.


The two different laws here were the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) of 1955, which provided for 90 days to file an appeal, as amended in 2003, and the Family Courts Act of 1984 that provides only 30 days.

In 2014, the HC had, in a divorce appeal filed in 2013, referred to the larger bench the issue of fixing the appeal deadline, after different benches gave conflicting findings on which law would prevail.

The bench held that the Family Courts Act was a procedural law and that its provisions were not intended to “impliedly” repeal provisions of the HMA.