“A woman is almost drained emotionally and physically in two or three rounds of court cases. There is a bumpy struggle between a man and woman as courts take several years to settle a case,” said Naresh Duggal, an advocate dealing with woman rights. “Under the laws, woman may get financial maintenance from her spouse but it is the woman who has to produce evidence of his income. Man generally tempers with his income statement or sometimes employer may refuse to give her or sometimes they issue wrong statements. You can say she has to face all kinds of humiliations from all directions. She never gets what judges announce in court,” added Kritka Gaur, another advocate for woman rights.

A survey conducted by an NGO, “Learn your rights” has different story to speak, their statistics says 50% of woman never received their maintenance awarded by court, 60% of women may receive the mentioned funds but not in time and 70% of women get less amount than awarded by the court. The survey found that mostly divorced women have recuperated merely 25% of assets given by their parents and men refused to return things like jewellery. The situation of divorced women in lower and middle class families is most terrible as they are depending on their biological family. Financial support remains main factor for divorced women and there is almost zero chance of obtaining income.

Behind the most divorces, media reports always focused on social values and blame women for it. However, 80% of women seek divorce due to cruelty or domestic violence in their marital homes or physical violence. Mostly women say that they split because of unbearable ability to fight. The joint families in India result in more divorce cases than small families, report states.  

The legal rights for divorced woman are insignificant, the government may likely amend the existing marriage laws, but it is still to be seen whether women will be benefited from it or not. It is up to women to take advantage of new laws otherwise divorce will continue to be a raw deal.

“You have not talked about misusing of laws in these cases. It is equally difficult for men to get divorce and go away from mental agony period. Some may have children, it is difficult to live without them, and so I pray that no one goes through such a period. It is better to be single than married,” concluded Kunal Singh, who recently separated from his wife.