Bill unfair on men

The Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which was recently passed by the Rajya Sabha is inegalitarian and regressive. If passed by the Lok Sabha, it would be draconian as it would be oppressive for men.
If it is passed into law, it should be struck down under Article 14 of the Constitution, which guarantees equality to both men and women.
The proposed law is certainly gender-biased. There is no rationale whatsoever why the law should benefit women, and not men. It is absurd that in cases of “irretrievable breakdown” of marriage, half the self-acquired property of the husband can be claimed by the woman. It would be sensible to make changes in the proposed law so that only matrimonial property is divided, that is, the property acquired during the course of the marriage.
In most developed countries, the laws concerning divorce say that only the property acquired by the husband during the course of the marriage can be claimed by the wife.
In today’s time, there are marriages that last only a few weeks and at times a few days. In those cases it wouldn’t be fair to give half of the self-acquired property of the man to the wife.
This law would lead to fraud marriages. It will spoil the fabric of marriage. Men will become suspicious of women; a man would think the prospective wife is only after his property and will divorce him soon. This could encourage men to stay away from wedlock and get into live-in relations, which in India are covered under the law on domestic violence, but are not considered equivalent to marriage. This will create further problems for women.
Statistics suggest that more women are defrauded than men. In such cases, maintenance to the distressed woman should be sufficient and the proposed law should be changed accordingly. It doesn’t make sense to give maintenance to the woman if a marriage lasts just a few weeks.
In cases where a woman leaves her husband for another man and the children remain with the father, it would be really illogical to give the man’s property or even maintenance to her. If a woman is a housewife and the husband has been earning, she should rightly be entitled to the property acquired by them/him during the course of the marriage.
It will, however, be unfair if she gets the property acquired by the husband before the marriage or inherited by him. If passed, the new law will spoil the fabric of marriage.
This Bill says that though the courts will keep in mind the husband’s inherited property while deciding compensation amount, especially if children are involved, the share in the husband’s inherited property will not be given to the wife in case of divorce.
Why would the court not treat the wife’s property with the same yardstick? Would an aggrieved husband be entitled to the self-acquired property of his wife? This law is not gender neutral. By bringing these amendments, the government thinks that it is doing service to the pro-woman sentiment. But no one seems to have thought about the law. It needs to have some rationale behind it.
Geeta Luthra is a senior advocate (As told to Ridhima Malhotra)

http://www.asianage.com/ideas/bill-unfair-men-585#comment-47450 

Indian men treated as Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage is what I begin to feel can best describe the situation for treatment of men in India, after watching a discussion by parliamentarians. The Indian parliament passed a bill that would amend the Hindu Marriage Law introducing new grounds of divorce under a situation described as “Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage.” Needless to say it is heavily loaded against men and is being passed on as “social justice.”
India had a hierarchical caste system, wherein the lower castes were denied certain opportunities, while the higher castes carried certain responsibilities and enjoyed liberties. In some ways, when the question of emancipation of the neglected came, it was found justifiable that sharing the limited resources by denying rights to one section and handing it over to another was social justice.
Later another form of social justice came up. This time with the baggage of a false notion of “patriarchy,” India was convinced that women have been deprived of rights and they need empowerment. Although, the definition of women remained, and even now remains only restricted to, being a wife. Any other role of woman in a household -mothers and sisters of a husband- does not evoke the same emotions due to some convoluted perception of a marital set-up by feminists and their backers.
Laws after laws are being created, which are being called pro-women, but in reality are only anti-men. When the flaws in these laws are highlighted the arguments usually end-up with mentioning of the historical disadvantage that women have had in India. Misandry like a hydra-headed monster rises in all of its forms. Somehow, it has become acceptable to unnecessarily punish the men of today to try to salvage the situation of women.
The men of my generation have begun to wonder if they are being used as fodder, so that the proponents of social justice could counter the sense of guilt in their hearts. Every politician we meet says he understands we are being discriminated against. Every person agreed that the law being framed for Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage was biased against men. Most tried to explain to us how the society in general is going through a transitional phase and ‘some’ men will suffer until equilibrium is attained. Never mind that they want to dismiss the facts about the ‘some’ men being a humungous number of 65000 married men committing suicide every year in India. The urge for the soothsayers to live in denial, makes them forget that the figure means every 7 minutes a married man commits suicide in India.
They can continue to become reason for someone’s death. But we refuse to become ‘Collateral Damage’ in their process of attaining self-satisfaction to achieve some irrational form of social justice. The Men’s rights movement in India is only getting stronger and it reflects in today’s discussion on the amendment to the marriage law in Rajya Sabha – the upper house of parliament. The discussion on this law has been another landmark for men’s rights in India, with many members from opposition regional political parties voicing the agenda of men’s rights in parliament which will go on record in the annals of history. The Law Minister had to misinform the house, at certain points to gain support, for e.g. he said the bill is gender neutral, when he knows it is not – a husband cannot oppose a petition filed by a wife, property(self-acquired before or after marriage, inherited and also inheritable) of only the husband is considered for division. The statements will be well documented in the records. History will judge that the people who brought this law were on the wrong side of justice.
The discussion has been storified here http://storify.com/antidespondent/irretrievable-breakdown-of-marriage-discussion-in
The only fear is the passage of this law, should not accelerate the numbers of suicides by men, who might feel there is no hope of help from the society. Thereby lies, the next challenge for the men’s rights activists in India, to continue reaching out to a populace of 500 million men.
 

 

http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/indian-men-treated-as-collateral-damage/ 

Government bid to give wives inherited property share

Government bid to give wives inherited property share

NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet is likely to discuss an amendment to the marriage laws which, in the event of a divorce, would give the wife an equal share of not only the property acquired by the husband during or before the marriage but also his inherited or inheritable property.

The proposed amendment, that is likely to be controversial, aims to redefine the phrase 'residential property' to include not just the residential house but also other properties acquired by the husband.
In case other members of the family (apart from the husband) also have rights in the inherited property and it is impractical to divide it, the amendment proposes to compensate the wife with an equivalent amount of money in place of her share.
The proposed change aims to give the wife an equal share in the property regardless of whether it was acquired before or after marriage and regardless of whether it is only in the husband's name or held jointly.
The changes in the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill, being brought under pressure from civil society as well as a section of MPs, is expected to come up in the cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
The government had earlier introduced the amendment bill in order to alter the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the Special Marriage Act, 1954, to introduce the option of divorce on grounds of "irretrievable breakdown of marriage".

The government had brought in a Bill to grant the wife the right to a share in the movable and immovable residential properties. But this was found wanting by some civil society groups who demanded that the wife should have a right not just in residential property but also all immovable properties of the husband.
Responding to the criticism, the government has now proposed to make another couple of amendments to provide a share to divorcing women in not just acquired properties but also inherited property and bringing in immovable assets beyond the residential house.
The government has decided to create a special provision in case of inherited properties in light of a Supreme Court order that one co-owner of joint family property does not have the right to sell his undivided share. Considering the Supreme Court orders, the government contended that giving over half the share of the husband in inherited property could lock the divorcing wife in to future litigation. Therefore, the amendment provides for the court to decide if she should get money in lieu of her share in such cases.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-30/india/38929151_1_inherited-property-joint-family-property-special-marriage-act