The Family Court has granted a husband’s application for a divorce he obtained in India to be recognised by the English courts.
The husband and wife were both Indian nationals who now had British citizenship. They had married in India in 2010 and had subsequently lived in England before relocating to India in 2019. After returning to the UK with one of the couple’s two children, the wife filed a petition for divorce in this country and was granted a decree nisi. Meanwhile, the husband obtained a divorce in India.
The husband applied to the Court to recognise the Indian divorce. He also applied to set aside the pronouncement of decree nisi on the grounds that the English courts did not have jurisdiction to entertain the wife’s divorce application.
The Court noted expert evidence that the divorce would be considered valid under Indian law and was therefore effective for the purposes of Section 46 of the Family Law Act 1996. The Court was also satisfied that the husband had taken reasonable steps to give the wife notice of the Indian proceedings. The relevant documentation had been sent to the wife’s father’s address in India and that of her employer there. Although the husband knew that the wife was living in England, the Court did not consider that ‘reasonable steps’ required her to be served in this jurisdiction. The Court added that, even if it were wrong about whether reasonable steps were taken, it would still not exercise its discretion under Section 51(3) of the Act to refuse to recognise the divorce. The application to recognise the Indian divorce was granted.
In case that decision was incorrect, however, the Court went on to consider the question of jurisdiction. While rejecting the submission that the husband was habitually resident in England and Wales, the Court found that the wife had acquired a domicile of choice here by the date she filed her petition for divorce.
Declining to dismiss the wife’s divorce application, the Court observed that she had applied to set aside the Indian divorce and, if she were successful, there would be no foreign divorce for the English courts to recognise. A stay on her divorce application would be maintained, and it would be dismissed if her application to set aside the Indian divorce failed.