Personal Laws relating to marriage, divorce, succession and maintenance with special

Two classmates in the same college fall in love and plan to marry. One family is Hindu, the other Muslim, and a third friend from a Christian family is attending the wedding. Which law governs each marriage, and what happens to each bride if it later breaks down? In India the answer depends on religion, and so do the rights a woman can claim on divorce, maintenance and inheritance. This topic maps those differences and asks how far the law has moved towards gender justice.

In two minutes

India has no single family law: marriage, divorce, maintenance and succession are governed by the personal law of each community, with the Special Marriage Act 1954 as the secular option, and the gaps between these systems are where women's claims most often depend on the religion they were born into.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law Relating to Women and Children on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.