In a ruling that sharply defines the boundaries of marital obligation under domestic violence law, the Bombay High Court has refused to compel a man to keep paying for a flat still under construction—one he and his estranged wife booked together back in 2020, during a short-lived attempt at reconciliation.
The woman, who sought judicial direction to make her husband cough up the pending installments for a Malad apartment, found little sympathy from the bench. Justice Manjusha Deshpande ruled that a property still under development and not occupied by either party fails the basic legal test of a “shared household” under Section 2(s) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.
Translation: If there’s no key in hand, there’s no protection under this Act.
The couple, married since 2013, had a relationship marked by comings and goings. At some point, the husband moved to the United States, and domestic violence allegations followed. The wife got an interim maintenance order in 2023. But she alleged that the husband later stopped paying rent and defaulted on maintenance too.
So, when the developer came knocking for the next payment on the Malad flat, she turned to the High Court, arguing that the under-construction property should still count as a shared household.
But the Court disagreed, noting that statutory protections under the DV Act are meant for places that actually exist in livable form. “Not in possession” and “still being built” didn’t cut it.
Earlier, the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate had granted her partial relief by barring the husband from transferring or selling the flat—but refused to mandate installment payments. That refusal was affirmed by the Sessions Court and now sealed by the High Court.
In court, the husband pushed back, saying the flat had never been occupied by either of them, wasn’t mentioned in the original domestic violence complaint, and wasn’t fit for residence. The judges concurred. A building still wrapped in scaffolding simply didn’t qualify as a marital battleground under the law.
Thus, the wife’s petition was dismissed. The flat remains unfinished—and the legal chapter, at least on this front, now closed.
