Family Law
Your rights in marriage, divorce, child custody, maintenance, inheritance, domestic violence, and senior citizen welfare under Indian central law.
Covered in this guide:
Marriage and divorce in India run on personal laws — the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, Muslim personal law, the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, 1936 — with the secular Special Marriage Act, 1954 sitting over the top. Custody goes to whoever serves the child's welfare under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890. Maintenance can be claimed under personal law, BNSS s. 144, or the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. Inheritance follows the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (daughters got equal rights in 2005) and the Indian Succession Act, 1925.
Key Laws
Hindu Marriage Act, 1955
Act No. 25 of 1955
Marriage, divorce, and restitution for Hindus
Special Marriage Act, 1954
Act No. 43 of 1954
Secular marriage for all citizens
Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005
Act No. 43 of 2005
Protection orders and relief for domestic violence
Hindu Succession Act, 1956
Act No. 30 of 1956 (amended 2005)
Inheritance and coparcenary rights
Guardians and Wards Act, 1890
Act No. 8 of 1890
Child custody and guardianship
Marriage Rights
Which marriage law applies to you depends on religion — except where you actively choose the secular Special Marriage Act. The choice has real downstream consequences for divorce, succession and inter...
Divorce Rights
Divorce in India runs on two tracks — fault-based and by mutual consent — with the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan opening a third for cases of irretrievable break...
Child Custody Rights
Indian custody law has one organising principle, set out repeatedly by the Supreme Court (Nil Ratan Kundu v. Abhijit Kundu, 2008): the welfare and best interests of the child — not the rights of the p...
Maintenance and Alimony
Maintenance — financial support — can be claimed three ways in India, and they don't cancel each other out. The criminal-procedure route is the fastest; the family-law route is the most generous; the...
Inheritance and Succession Rights
Succession law in India is personal-law-dependent — Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Parsis each follow different rules. The 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, made retrospective by the Suprem...
Protection from Domestic Violence
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (PWDVA) was a deliberate move away from a purely criminal model. It gives women a civil remedy — protection orders, residence orders, monetary...
Adoption Rights
India runs two separate adoption frameworks depending on the adoptive parent's religion — and the secular CARA route is the only option for Muslims, Christians and Parsis, whose personal laws don't fo...
Senior Citizens' Rights
The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 was Parliament's response to a problem courts had been seeing for decades — elderly parents abandoned by adult children with no rea...