Living Separately for 15 Years, But Your Spouse Won’t Agree to Divorce?

The Supreme Court’s June 2026 Answer

By Advocate Karan Dua | Vintage Litigation, New Delhi | Published: June 2026

You moved out—or your spouse did—years ago. There was no single dramatic incident, no FIR, no fight anyone could point to as “the reason.” You simply stopped living as husband and wife. No maintenance dispute. No custody battle. Just two separate lives, lived under the same legal tie.

Now you want a divorce. But your spouse won’t agree to mutual divorce, and you’re being told that walking out doesn’t, by itself, give you a ground to file. Desertion has technical requirements. Cruelty usually means something happened. So what do you do when nothing “happened”—except fifteen years of silence?

On June 2, 2026, the Supreme Court of India answered this exact question in ST v. VS (2026 INSC 620). The ruling doesn’t just resolve one couple’s fifteen-year standoff—it gives every Delhi family court a clearer basis to grant divorce in long-separation marriages, without anyone having to prove a single dramatic act of cruelty.

Why “We’ve Been Separated for Years” Wasn’t Enough — Until Now

Indian matrimonial law has never recognized separation, by itself, as a ground for divorce. A contested divorce under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 requires proof of a specific fault: cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia), desertion under Section 13(1)(ib), adultery, or a handful of other defined grounds. Desertion has its own strict test—continuous abandonment for two years, paired with an intention to permanently end cohabitation (animus deserendi)—which is often genuinely difficult to establish, especially when both spouses simply drifted apart rather than one walking out in anger.

This left a large category of marriages stuck in limbo: spouses who hadn’t lived together in over a decade, neither of whom could clearly prove the other deserted them, and who hadn’t experienced—or couldn’t evidence—a specific cruel act. Without mutual consent, and without a clean fault ground, the marriage simply continued on paper. This is a different problem from the one we covered in our guide on the difference between divorce and legal separation in India—here, the couple isn’t choosing to stay legally separated; one spouse genuinely wants out and is blocked by the evidentiary gap.

The June 2026 Ruling: ST v. VS (2026 INSC 620)

The parties married in December 2007 under Hindu rites in Gujarat. No children were born of the marriage. Both spouses were doctors—the wife working as a gynecologist in a government hospital in Gujarat and the husband in state service in Rajasthan. According to the husband, the wife resided with him at the matrimonial home for only two to three months across the entire marriage.

The husband filed a divorce petition under Section 13(1)(ia) before the Family Court, Bharatpur, seeking dissolution on the ground of cruelty. The Family Court dismissed it, holding that cruelty hadn’t been established. On appeal, the Rajasthan High Court at Jaipur reversed that finding—pointing to repeated denial of sexual relations, public insults directed at the husband, and a separation that by then exceeded fifteen years—and granted the divorce decree.

The wife appealed to the Supreme Court. Her position was consistent throughout: she had never deserted her husband, had always been willing to resume married life, and argued that since desertion and irretrievable breakdown hadn’t even been specifically pleaded in the original petition, the husband shouldn’t be allowed to benefit from a separation he himself had arguably allowed to continue.

A bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Augustine George Masih examined the record closely. Court-facilitated mediation attempted during the Supreme Court proceedings had failed. One specific factual allegation against the wife (an incident involving a shopkeeper during a trip to the Taj Mahal) was rejected outright as unsubstantiated—the Court was careful not to accept every claim at face value. But on the central question, the evidence showed that even during the brief period of cohabitation, the wife had slept separately and locked her room from inside, leaving the husband to sleep elsewhere in the house.

Relying on the long-standing principle from Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007)—that persistent denial of conjugal relations without reasonable cause amounts to mental cruelty—and on the more recent Nayan Bhowmick v. Aparna Chakraborty (2025), the Court held that a prolonged refusal by either spouse to accommodate the other can itself constitute cruelty. It went further: prolonged separation, complete cessation of cohabitation, and emotional alienation, taken together, may legitimately be treated as indicators of mental cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) — even where desertion was never separately pleaded or proven. The Court also noted that an appeal is a continuation of the original suit, so an appellate court is entitled to weigh how the parties conducted themselves throughout the litigation, not just at the time the petition was first filed.

Separately — and this distinction matters — the Court also held that the case was independently fit for dissolution under Article 142 of the Constitution on the ground of irretrievable breakdown. The wife’s appeal was dismissed, and the marriage was dissolved.

Why This Matters Beyond One Couple’s Case

We’ve written before about how the Supreme Court has used its Article 142 powers to dissolve marriages that have irretrievably broken down—but Article 142 is a power that belongs exclusively to the Supreme Court. Family courts and high courts in Delhi cannot invoke it. What ST v. VS does differently is locate the same underlying problem—a marriage that exists only on paper—inside the ordinary cruelty ground under Section 13(1)(ia), a ground every family court in the country already has jurisdiction to apply.

In practical terms, that’s a far more accessible route for someone in Delhi today. You no longer need to escalate all the way to the Supreme Court and ask it to use its extraordinary constitutional power. A well-evidenced cruelty petition before the Family Court—built around prolonged separation, cessation of cohabitation, and the absence of any genuine reconciliation effort—can now draw directly on this precedent.

That said, the Court was equally careful to close off misuse. It expressly cautioned that an appellate court must ensure a party doesn’t “profit from their own manifest wrong or unilateral desertion.” In other words, this isn’t a rule that says fifteen years apart automatically equals divorce, regardless of who caused the separation or walked away from reconciliation efforts. It’s an evidentiary principle, not an automatic entitlement — judges will still look closely at who caused the estrangement and who, if anyone, resisted reconciliation in bad faith. This is consistent with how the Court has approached other recent rulings on what does and doesn’t constitute matrimonial fault—including its clarification, discussed in our piece on why a wife’s career choices are not cruelty or desertion, that not every unconventional marital arrangement can be dressed up as fault on either side.

For husbands specifically, this ruling is significant because long-separation marriages where the wife resists divorce but cannot point to active reconciliation efforts on her part have historically been hard to exit without an expensive, drawn-out desertion trial. ST v. VS gives husbands—and equally, wives in the reverse situation—a clearer, citable basis to argue cruelty instead.

What Delhi Family Courts Will Likely Look At

Based on the reasoning in ST v. VS, a cruelty petition built on prolonged separation is likely to turn on:

• The length and continuity of the separation — the Court placed real weight on a separation exceeding fifteen years with virtually no genuine cohabitation even at the outset.
• Denial of conjugal relations during whatever cohabitation did occur — not as an isolated incident, but as a sustained pattern.
• Genuine reconciliation efforts, or their absence — including conduct during court-referred mediation. A party who refuses to even attempt reconciliation weakens their own position if they later resist divorce.
• Conduct during the pendency of litigation itself, since an appeal is treated as a continuation of the original case, not a fresh start.
• Who is responsible for the separation continuing — the court will not let a spouse who caused or perpetuated the estrangement use that same separation against the other.
• Financial independence of both spouses, which the Court noted in passing (both parties here were doctors in government service)—though this factor will weigh differently in cases involving maintenance and alimony claims and even more so where minor children’s custody is contested.

Practical Steps If You’re in a Long-Separated Marriage in Delhi

If you’ve been living apart from your spouse for several years and want to formally end the marriage, the first decision is strategic: is mutual consent realistically on the table or not? A mutual divorce remains faster and less adversarial whenever both spouses are willing—even after years apart, it’s often worth one structured conversation before filing anything contested.

Where mutual consent isn’t possible, ST v. VS changes what your lawyer should be building evidence around from day one. Document the duration and continuity of the separation precisely—dates, addresses, and any correspondence. Keep a clear record of any reconciliation attempts, including mediation, and who participated genuinely versus who didn’t. If conjugal relations were denied during any period of cohabitation, that pattern — not a single incident — is what the law now treats as significant.

This is also not a decision to make without specialist input. The line between “prolonged separation as cruelty” and “you caused this separation and cannot benefit from your own wrong” is fact-specific, and getting the characterization wrong at the Family Court stage can cost years on appeal.

How Vintage Litigation Can Help

Advocate Karan Dua has represented both petitioning and respondent spouses in long-separation matrimonial disputes across Delhi’s family courts, the Delhi High Court, and the Supreme Court of India. Whether you’ve been separated for two years or twenty, and whether you’re seeking divorce or defending against a cruelty petition built on separation alone, we can assess your specific facts against this new precedent and build a clear strategy within days of your first consultation.

Online first consultation. Fully confidential. No commitment required.

📞 Call / WhatsApp: +91-9999483959 📧 Email: Adv.karan.dua67@gmail.com 📍 Office: O-11A, Basement, Jangpura Extension, New Delhi – 110014 ⏰ Hours: Monday–Saturday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM. WhatsApp is available after hours.

FAQ

Q1: Can a court grant divorce just because spouses have lived separately for many years?

A: Not automatically. Indian law doesn’t recognize long separation, by itself, as a standalone ground for divorce. However, the Supreme Court’s June 2026 ruling in ST v. VS (2026 INSC 620) held that prolonged separation, combined with complete cessation of cohabitation and emotional alienation, can be treated as an indicator of mental cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act — meaning it strengthens a cruelty petition, but it still has to be argued and evidenced as cruelty, not simply asserted as “we’ve been apart for years.”

Q2: Is desertion the same thing as cruelty under the Hindu Marriage Act?

A: No. Desertion under Section 13(1)(ib) requires proof of continuous abandonment for at least two years along with an intention to permanently end the marriage. Cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) is a separate ground and doesn’t require proving that specific intention. In ST v. VS, the Supreme Court granted divorce on the cruelty ground even though desertion had not been separately pleaded by treating the prolonged separation and denial of conjugal relations as evidence of cruelty instead.

Q3: What exactly counts as “mental cruelty” under Section 13(1)(ia)?

A: Mental cruelty has no fixed checklist — courts assess the overall conduct of the parties and its impact on the other spouse. Established categories include persistent denial of conjugal relations without reasonable cause (Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh, 2007), sustained refusal to accommodate the other spouse over a long period (Nayan Bhowmick v. Aparna Chakraborty, 2025), and now, per ST v. VS (2026), prolonged separation coupled with cessation of cohabitation and emotional alienation.

Q4: My spouse says I deserted them—can they use our separation against me to get a divorce?

A: It depends on who caused the separation and who resisted reconciliation. The Supreme Court was explicit in ST v. VS that an appellate court must ensure a party does not “profit from their own manifest wrong or unilateral desertion.” If you can show your spouse caused the estrangement or rejected genuine reconciliation efforts, that conduct can work against their cruelty claim rather than support it. This is a fact-intensive, case-specific assessment.

Q5: How is this different from the Supreme Court dissolving a marriage under Article 142 for irretrievable breakdown?

A: Article 142 is a constitutional power available only to the Supreme Court — it lets the Court dissolve a marriage directly when it has irretrievably broken down, bypassing ordinary statutory grounds. Family courts and the Delhi High Court cannot use Article 142. ST v. VS is significant precisely because it located a similar outcome inside the ordinary cruelty ground under Section 13(1)(ia), which every family court already has the power to apply—making it a far more accessible route than waiting to escalate to the Supreme Court. Read our full explainer on the irretrievable breakdown doctrine and Article 142 for more on when that route applies instead.

Q6: Does refusing physical relations with your spouse count as cruelty even if nothing else happened?

A: It can, if the refusal is persistent and without reasonable cause — this has been settled law since Samar Ghosh v. Jaya Ghosh (2007) and was reaffirmed in ST v. VS (2026). The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that withholding conjugal relations over a sustained period inflicts real emotional harm and can, on its own, support a finding of mental cruelty, separate from any single dramatic incident.

Q7: We tried mediation, and it failed—does that help or hurt my divorce case?

A: It can help your case if you participated genuinely. In ST v. VS, the Supreme Court noted that mediation attempted during the appeal had failed and treated this—along with years of separation—as part of the overall picture showing no realistic prospect of reconciliation. Courts generally view a documented, good-faith attempt at reconciliation favorably, regardless of which party ultimately wants the divorce.

Q8: Can the appellate court (High Court or Supreme Court) consider what happened after the original divorce petition was filed?

A: Yes. The Supreme Court confirmed in ST v. VS that an appeal is a continuation of the original suit, meaning an appellate court is entitled to take into account the conduct of the parties during the pendency of the litigation itself—not just the facts as they stood when the petition was first filed. This is particularly relevant in long-running matrimonial cases where the separation has continued, or even begun, after the case was filed.

Q9: I’ve been separated from my spouse for years but we have no major disputes over money or children — is mutual divorce still better than fighting a cruelty case?

A: In most cases, yes. A mutual consent divorce is generally faster, less expensive, and less adversarial than a contested cruelty petition, even after a long separation. ST vs. VS matters mainly for situations where mutual consent genuinely isn’t available—one spouse refuses to agree, and the other needs a fault-based route. Before filing anything contested, it’s worth one structured attempt at mutual consent, ideally with legal guidance on how the conversation is framed.

Q10: How long does a contested divorce based on prolonged separation typically take in Delhi?

A: Timelines vary significantly with the facts, the court, and whether the other spouse contests at every stage. A cruelty petition built around documented prolonged separation, as in ST v. VS, can move faster than a traditional desertion case because the evidentiary burden is different—but contested matters in Delhi family courts can still take anywhere from one to several years, especially if appealed. Early, specialist-guided documentation of the separation and any reconciliation attempts is the single biggest factor in keeping the timeline manageable.

Adv. Karan Dua — Advocate, Delhi High Court · Matrimonial & Family Law Adv. Karan Dua is a Delhi-based advocate specializing in matrimonial disputes, divorce litigation, domestic violence proceedings, and child custody matters. He practices before the Delhi High Court and family courts across the NCR, with a focus on evidence strategy in complex, long-pending matrimonial matters. Learn more about Vintage Litigation or get in touch.