Maintenance Waived in a Divorce Settlement Cannot Be Revived Through a Domestic Violence Complaint — Supreme Court in Reji Baby v. Subi Mary (2026 INSC 918)

This article is for educational and legal awareness purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice or solicitation. Please consult a qualified advocate for advice on specific legal matters.

Overview

Mutual-consent divorces in India are almost always built on a written settlement. The wife gives up her claim to maintenance and permanent alimony; the husband transfers a lump sum, or property, or both; and each side agrees not to litigate against the other again. The document is signed, the second motion is moved, and the decree follows.

The question that keeps returning to the courts is what that waiver is actually worth. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 gives a magistrate power under Section 12 to grant monetary relief under Section 20, including maintenance, on a complaint that need not be filed within any period of limitation. If a former wife files such a complaint after the decree, is the earlier waiver a defence, or is it simply beside the point because the 2005 Act creates a statutory entitlement that no private agreement can extinguish?

On 24 August 2026 the Supreme Court answered that question on the facts before it, and quashed the domestic violence proceedings.

Case: Reji Baby v. Subi Mary & Ors.
Number: Criminal Appeal No. 1346 of 2021
Court/Bench: Supreme Court of India — Justices Manmohan (author) and Sandeep Mehta
Neutral citation: 2026 INSC 918
Date: 24 August 2026 (the SCC Online blog’s August 2026 roundup lists the decision as 26 August 2026 and reports it as 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1697; this post follows the date carried on the judgment itself)

Background

The appellant and respondent no. 1 were husband and wife. Their differences were resolved by a Settlement Agreement dated 23 July 2016, under which respondent no. 1 relinquished all monetary claims against the appellant, including maintenance.

The parties then moved the Family Court jointly for dissolution of the marriage by mutual consent in O.P. (Div) No. 259 of 2015. On 24 January 2017, respondent no. 1 filed an affidavit before the Family Court reiterating the waiver. The judgment records her statement in terms: “I have relinquished my claim for maintenance against the 2nd petitioner.” The decree of divorce by mutual consent followed on 30 January 2017.

Respondent no. 2 is the appellant’s daughter. She had attained majority before the Settlement Agreement was executed and was not a party to it.

Notwithstanding the settlement, the affidavit and the decree, a complaint under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 was filed by the respondents and registered as M.C. 23/2017 on the file of the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Kalamassery. The acts of domestic violence alleged in that complaint related to a period preceding the Settlement Agreement.

The appellant approached the High Court of Kerala under its inherent jurisdiction, in Crl. M.C. No. 8568 of 2017, to have the proceedings quashed. By its judgment dated 26 October 2018 the High Court declined and dismissed the petition. That order was carried to the Supreme Court in Criminal Appeal No. 1346 of 2021.

What the Parties Argued

For the appellant, the case was that the Settlement Agreement had specifically recorded that respondent no. 1 would not make any monetary or maintenance claim against him, and that the agreement had in fact been acted upon. The appellant pointed to two properties that had come to respondent no. 2 and were subsequently sold.

For the respondents, three arguments were advanced. First, that the Settlement Agreement had been executed under duress, brought about by the urgency of migration to the United States of America. Second, that a private agreement cannot take away statutory maintenance. Third, that an agreement by which a party surrenders fundamental rights is opposed to public policy and therefore unenforceable.

The Court’s Reasoning

The Bench held that continuing the domestic violence proceedings in these circumstances was an abuse of the process of the court, and rested that conclusion on four connected findings.

1. A voluntary relinquishment cannot be revived by a fresh proceeding. The core holding is stated in a single sentence: “Once the respondent No.1-wife had voluntarily relinquished all monetary claims, including maintenance, revival of such claims through subsequent proceedings cannot be permitted.” The waiver here was not a stray recital. It was recorded in the Settlement Agreement of 23 July 2016 and repeated on affidavit before the Family Court on 24 January 2017 — a double waiver, made once contractually and once to the court that was being asked to dissolve the marriage on that footing.

2. The complaint disclosed no cause of action arising after the settlement. The acts alleged in M.C. 23/2017 predated the Settlement Agreement. The proceedings were therefore not an attempt to redress anything that had happened since the parties compromised; they were an attempt to reopen the very subject matter the compromise had closed.

3. Duress was asserted but never litigated. The plea that the agreement had been signed under compulsion was made only in argument. Neither the Settlement Agreement nor the decree of divorce that had been obtained on the strength of it was ever formally challenged in any proceeding. A bare assertion of duress, unaccompanied by any step to set aside the document said to have been extracted by it, was held insufficient.

4. The parties knew what they were signing. Being, in the Court’s description, well educated and cognizant of their rights, the parties had to be deemed to have consciously and voluntarily executed the documents they signed. That finding disposed of the argument that the waiver was uninformed or coerced.

The Operative Order

The concluding direction of the judgment is short: “the present appeal is allowed and the judgment and order 26th October 2018 passed by the High Court of Kerala in CRL. MC No. 8568/2017 is set aside. Proceedings in M.C. 23/2017 on the file of the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Kalamassery, are quashed.”

The quashing was, however, expressly qualified. Respondent no. 2, the daughter, had not been a party to the Settlement Agreement and had relinquished nothing. Liberty was reserved to her to initiate proceedings for monetary relief independently. The settlement bound those who made it, and no one else.

Precedents Relied On

Two decisions carried the reasoning.

Dhananjay Rathi v. Ruchika Rathi, cited in the judgment as 2026 SCC OnLine SC 587 and reported as 2026 INSC 360, was decided on 13 April 2026 by Justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi. There the parties had settled their matrimonial disputes through mediation, the wife had received the agreed consideration, and the first motion had been allowed; she then declined the second motion and filed a domestic violence complaint founded on further promises she said had been made orally but which found no place in the written agreement. The Court deprecated the continuation of those proceedings and quashed them, holding in substance that once parties have voluntarily entered into a settlement agreement and agreed to abide by the consequences of its non-compliance, they cannot be allowed to reverse the effects of the agreement by fresh litigation.

Gimpex Private Limited v. Manoj Goel, (2022) 11 SCC 705, decided on 8 October 2021 by Justices Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, B.V. Nagarathna and Vikram Nath, is not a matrimonial case at all — it arose from dishonoured cheques and a compromise deed under which fresh cheques were issued. Its relevance is the principle it settled: a settlement agreement subsumes the original complaint, so a party cannot pursue parallel proceedings on the same underlying subject matter and cannot reverse the effects of the settlement through a later filing. Reji Baby applies that principle to a matrimonial compromise.

Takeaway

Three points emerge for anyone dealing with a settlement in a matrimonial matter.

First, the enforceability of a maintenance waiver in this judgment turned on how it was recorded, not merely on the fact that it existed. What the Court had before it was a written agreement, an affidavit repeating the waiver in express terms before the Family Court, and a decree obtained on that basis. A waiver buried in general language and never placed before the court that grants the decree stands on materially weaker ground.

Second, the distinction the Court drew between pre-settlement and post-settlement conduct matters. The complaint failed because everything alleged in it predated the agreement. Nothing in the judgment suggests that a settlement operates as a licence for the future, or bars a complaint founded on acts occurring after it.

Third, a settlement binds only its parties. The daughter’s liberty to proceed independently is the clearest illustration in the judgment: an adult child who signs nothing gives up nothing, whatever the parents have agreed between themselves. Where a settlement is intended to close the matter comprehensively, the persons entitled to claim under the 2005 Act have to be brought into it, and no agreement can bring in a person who is not before it.

A fourth point is about procedure rather than substance. The respondents’ answer to the settlement was that it had been extracted under duress. That is a serious allegation, and one the law has a mechanism for — a proceeding to have the document, and the decree founded on it, set aside. What the judgment holds is that the allegation cannot be kept in reserve and deployed as an argument in resisting a quashing petition years later, while the document itself is left standing and unchallenged.

Useful Resources

Disclaimer: The information provided on this website is for general legal awareness and educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, advertisement, or solicitation. No reader should act or refrain from acting based on this information without seeking professional legal counsel. Advocate Akhil Singh and this website are not liable for any actions taken based on the content provided herein.