Family Court in Delhi — a court deliberately built to behave differently, where a lawyer is not your right and a settlement you consent to cannot be appealed

A court that was designed to work against its own habits

In 1984 Parliament decided that the ordinary machinery was the wrong machinery for a family. An ordinary court is built to produce a winner. It runs on strict rules of evidence, on adversarial examination, and on a public hearing. Applied to a marriage with a child in it, that process tends to make the aftermath worse than the dispute.

So the Family Courts Act, 1984 created something else and then deliberately switched several ordinary rules off. Read the Act as a list of departures and it makes immediate sense:

Every one of those changes the right way to prepare, and most people prepare for the court in the left-hand column.

What this page deliberately does not cover, because it is set out properly elsewhere: what your case is actually about. That the Domestic Violence Act is civil and not criminal, mutual against contested, how maintenance and custody are really decided, and how to write a settlement that holds — all of that is on our Karkardooma page. Read that one for the case. Read this one for the room.

Section 13 — the sentence nobody has read

Here it is, because paraphrasing it loses the force. Section 13 of the Family Courts Act, 1984 provides that notwithstanding anything contained in any law, no party to a suit or proceeding before a Family Court shall be entitled, as of right, to be represented by a legal practitioner — with a proviso that if the Family Court considers it necessary in the interest of justice, it may seek the assistance of a legal expert as amicus curiae.

The reasoning behind it was not hostility to the profession. It was that a family dispute conducted through two advocates tends to become a contest conducted by proxies, that the parties stop speaking to each other entirely, and that the thing which actually has to happen — two people arranging the rest of their lives — stops being possible.

What actually happens in the building is more ordinary than the section sounds. Courts commonly permit representation, advocates appear in Family Courts every day, and nobody is turned away at the door for arriving with one. But the legal position is exactly what the section says: it is a permission, and it rests on the court’s view of what the case needs.

So should you engage somebody? The honest answer

We are a documentation business and we do not take a fee from any advocate, so there is nothing in this for us either way. Here is what we actually think, from the files that come to us.

The one thing we would say to anybody thinking of appearing alone to save money: find out about free legal services first. A person doing this unrepresented because they cannot pay, when there is a desk in the building for exactly that, is the outcome the Act was least trying to produce.

Section 9 — the court has to try to settle it before it decides it

This is the provision that most changes what the early months feel like.

Section 9(1) requires that in every suit or proceeding, endeavour shall be made by the Family Court in the first instance, where it is possible to do so consistently with the nature and circumstances of the case, to assist and persuade the parties in arriving at a settlement in respect of the subject-matter — and for that purpose the court may follow such procedure as it deems fit, subject to High Court rules. Section 9(2) allows it to adjourn the proceedings for such period as it thinks fit to let attempts at settlement be made.

Two consequences. The first is that the early dates are frequently not about your pleadings at all, and a person who has spent a month preparing to be heard on the merits comes away feeling the day was wasted. It was not. That is the statute working.

The second is subtler and more useful. Because settlement is the court’s own duty rather than a suggestion, how you conduct yourself during that phase is visible to the person who will later decide the case if it does not settle. A party who engages with it seriously and a party who treats it as an obstacle both leave an impression, and it is the same judge.

The counsellor, and what that meeting actually is

Section 6 provides for counsellors, officers and other employees to be attached to the Family Court, and a referral to counselling is a normal step in the life of a case, not a sign that something has gone wrong or that the court thinks you should reconcile.

Be clear about what the counsellor is and is not. They are not your therapist, and the conversation is not private in the way a therapist’s is. They are not your advocate and are not there to take your side. They are attached to the court, and their function is to see whether a workable arrangement exists.

People ask what the counsellor writes and where it goes. The honest answer is that it is part of the court’s process, so treat everything you say there as capable of reaching the file, and behave accordingly — which is also just good advice.

Section 7 — what this court is allowed to decide

Section 7 sets out the Family Court’s jurisdiction, and the categories are worth knowing because people frequently try to bring in something that is not on the list.

• A decree of nullity of marriage, restitution of conjugal rights, judicial separation or dissolution of marriage.
• A declaration as to the validity of a marriage or as to the matrimonial status of a person.
• A dispute with respect to the property of the parties to a marriage, or of either of them.
• An order or injunction in circumstances arising out of a marital relationship.
• A declaration as to the legitimacy of any person.
• Maintenance.
• Guardianship of the person of a minor, or custody of or access to a minor.

Section 7(2) additionally brings in maintenance proceedings of the kind provided for under the criminal procedure code, which is why a maintenance application many people think of as a criminal-side matter is heard here.

What is not on the list belongs somewhere else, and the general question of which court can hear what — subject matter, value and territory — is worked through on our Saket page.

Section 8 — and you cannot go anywhere else

A question we are asked in some form every month: the Family Court is slow, can we file in a civil court instead?

No. Section 8 provides that where a Family Court has been established for an area, the jurisdiction of the district court and of any subordinate civil court in relation to the suits and proceedings the Act covers is excluded, along with the corresponding magistrate’s jurisdiction in the matters it specifies.

So the alternative people imagine does not exist. What does exist is the ability to have a matter transferred between Family Courts where there is good reason, which is a different thing and is dealt with further down this page.

Section 14 — the evidence rule that surprises everybody

Here is the text, because this one also loses force in paraphrase. A Family Court may receive as evidence any report, statement, documents, information or matter that may, in its opinion, assist it to deal effectually with a dispute, whether or not the same would be otherwise relevant or admissible under the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

That is a wide power and it was given for a reason: family disputes generate exactly the kind of material — messages between spouses, a school record, a counsellor’s observation, a household document — that strict rules of proof would exclude while everybody in the room knows it is the real story.

Now the part people get wrong. Section 14 says the court may receive such material. It does not say that whatever you bring will be admitted, and it is not a licence to gather material however you like. Courts have had to weigh the section against privacy, and the results have turned on the facts — what the material is, how it was obtained, and what it is offered to prove.

How anything is proved in an ordinary court, including the certificate an electronic record needs there, is set out on our Dwarka page — and the contrast with this section is the point.

Sections 15 and 16 — what actually goes on the record

A second set of departures, and they change how you should speak.

Section 15 allows the judge, as the examination of each witness proceeds, to record or cause to be recorded a memorandum of the substance of what the witness deposes, rather than the evidence at length. Section 16 allows evidence of a formal character to be given on affidavit.

The practical instruction that follows is simple and almost nobody is told it. What survives is the substance. So the important point has to be said clearly, early, and in one sentence — not arrived at after ten minutes of background about what somebody’s mother said in 2019. A witness who buries the fact that matters inside a narrative frequently finds that the narrative was recorded as substance and the fact was not.

Write down, before any hearing at which you will speak, the three things you must get on the record. Then say them.

Section 11 — the hearing can be closed

Section 11 allows proceedings under the Act to be held in camera, and where privacy matters to you this is a request to make rather than a hope to carry.

For most people, though, the anxiety is about something slightly different and just as real: the corridor. Who is waiting outside, whose relatives have come, whether somebody is going to film or photograph, and whether an argument is going to happen in a public passage. Say so to your advocate in advance if that is a genuine worry; there are usually practical arrangements, and none of them can be made on the morning.

The first date, and why it feels like nothing happened

People rehearse for weeks and then stand in a room for four minutes. Here is what the first date usually consists of: appearance recorded, service on the other side checked, a date given for the written response if it has not come, and very often a referral to counselling.

Almost nobody argues the merits of anything on a first date, in any court, and in this one the statute positively pushes the early dates towards settlement instead. Going home feeling the day was wasted is the commonest reaction and it is the wrong one.

What is genuinely worth doing on that day is small and practical: note the next date and exactly what has to be filed before it, note the court number and the case number together, and confirm with your advocate what your own next task is. The general mechanics of a hearing morning — the cause list, the room, the security check — are on our Tis Hazari page and are the same here.

How to conduct yourself, in a court that is watching you

This matters more here than anywhere else on this site, and it is not about manners. In most courts the judge assesses a file. In this one the judge is also forming a view about two people who may have to co-parent for a decade, and that view is formed partly from what they see.

None of this is about being liked. It is about not handing away credibility on facts that have nothing to do with the merits.

If what you are actually asking this court for is custody of or access to a child, the test the court applies is narrower than most parents expect — it is the welfare of the child and nothing else. Our child custody page sets out what that means in practice, which arguments carry weight and which do not, and why the three words custody, guardianship and access are not interchangeable.

If the court speaks to your child

Where a child is old enough, a court may choose to interact with them in the manner it considers appropriate, and it is handled with considerably more care than parents fear.

There is exactly one instruction worth giving a parent about it, and it is absolute. Do not prepare the child. Do not tell them what to say, what to call the other parent, what to remember, or what not to mention.

Three reasons, in order of how much they should matter to you. It is usually obvious — people who speak to children for a living can tell. It damages the parent who did it, badly and permanently, in the eyes of the person deciding the case. And it puts a child in the position of believing that the outcome for their family rests on their performance, which is a burden no adult in this dispute would accept.

What is fair to say to a child is that somebody may ask them some questions, that there is no right answer, that nobody will be upset with them whatever they say, and that it is not their job to fix this.

Four different things a person can ask this court for

Section 7 lists the categories, and in ordinary conversation they all get called “the divorce case”. They are not the same request and they do not lead to the same place, so it is worth being able to tell them apart when somebody tells you what has been filed against you.

The last one deserves an honest sentence. A petition for restitution is quite often filed for reasons that have little to do with wanting anybody back — to establish a position on who left, to get ahead of an anticipated petition, or to affect a maintenance claim. If one has been filed against you, do not read it emotionally and do not ignore it; read it as a pleading and answer it as one, on advice.

The court can also be asked for a declaration about the validity of a marriage or somebody’s matrimonial status, for orders about the property of the parties, for injunctions arising out of the marital relationship, about legitimacy, maintenance, and guardianship, custody and access. Which of these fits your facts is the first question, and getting it wrong at the start is expensive to correct.

If you reconcile halfway through

It happens more often than the literature suggests, and people are frequently too embarrassed to ask about it: the case is running, and the two of them have begun speaking again.

Nobody is trapped by a filed petition. A proceeding can be withdrawn, and given that Section 9 makes attempting settlement the court’s own duty, this is the outcome the statute was written to hope for. There is no penalty and nothing shameful in it.

Two practical cautions all the same. First, do it properly on the record rather than by simply not attending — a case abandoned instead of withdrawn can produce orders in your absence and leaves an unfinished proceeding sitting there. Second, if the reconciliation involves promises that matter — where you will live, what happens to a loan, what happens to an asset, that a complaint will be withdrawn — write them down anyway. Doing so is not distrust; it is the single thing that makes a reconciliation survive its first bad week.

And where criminal proceedings are also running between the same parties, those do not end merely because the two of you have made up. That is a separate exercise with its own procedure, and it should be addressed deliberately rather than assumed away.

Counselling, mediation, Lok Adalat — three different things

They get used interchangeably in conversation and they are not the same.

All three are worth engaging with seriously and for the same unromantic reason: in a family matter, an arrangement both people accepted tends to be complied with, and an order imposed on somebody tends to be fought about for years afterwards. That is not sentiment; it is the difference between money arriving every month and an execution petition.

Getting the terms written properly — and the warning attached

Whatever route produces the agreement, the document is what you live with. A settlement saying “the respondent shall pay reasonable maintenance” or “visitation as mutually convenient” is not an agreement; it is a future dispute with a date on it.

What survives contact with reality is specific: amounts, dates, the mode of payment and the account, exactly when a child is handed over and where and by whom, what happens on birthdays and holidays, who holds which document, what happens to each asset and by when, and what each side gives up. The long version of how to write one is on our Karkardooma page, and it is worth the reading time before you sign anything.

We draft the paperwork — family settlement agreements, mutual divorce documentation, the affidavits that go with them — and whether the bargain is a good one is for your advocate and for you.

The most important paragraph on this page

This is why we are tedious about the wording. Everything you are going to want has to be in the document on the day it is recorded, in figures and dates. Nothing can be left to be “sorted out between us later”, because after a consent decree there is no later.

Before consenting to anything, three questions, every time. Do I understand each term as a number or a date rather than as a sentiment? Have I asked my own advocate, separately, whether this is a reasonable bargain? And can I live with this in three years, not just today when I want it to be over?

Section 19 — thirty days, and they start immediately

Where the order is not a consent order, Section 19 provides an appeal to the High Court, both on facts and on law, from every judgment or order that is not an interlocutory order. And it must be preferred within thirty days from the date of the judgment or order.

Thirty days is short. It is shorter than the period most people spend deciding whether they have the energy to continue. So on the day an order goes against you, the question to put to counsel before you leave the building is: is this appealable, and by when? Write the answer down.

Apply for the certified copy in the same week — we obtain certified true copies — and where time has already run, an application for condonation goes in with the appeal supported by a dated explanation. How the High Court approaches an appeal, and what it looks for, is on our Delhi High Court page. We prepare the appeal papers to counsel’s instructions.

Applications while the case runs

A family matter is not one hearing; it is a long sequence in which the things that actually affect daily life — interim maintenance, interim access to a child, an injunction about a house or an asset — are dealt with by applications along the way.

Two points that save people a great deal. First, ask about these at the first meeting rather than at the end, because an interim arrangement made in month two governs the next two years and becomes difficult to disturb. Second, an application is only as good as what is annexed to it: a claim about income needs the documents that show income, and a claim about a pattern of behaviour needs dates.

We draw applications, replies and the petitions themselves — including maintenance, custody, guardianship, judicial separation and annulment — to counsel’s instructions. What is asked for, and when, is theirs to advise.

When the case was filed in another city

A common and unpleasant situation: the marriage broke down, one party returned to their parents in another state, and the petition was filed where the other one is. For somebody with a small child, no income of their own and a thousand kilometres in between, that is not a procedural inconvenience; it decides the case by exhaustion.

A transfer application is the recognised answer, and applications of this kind — particularly by a wife who cannot reasonably travel — are a familiar category. It is decided on convenience and hardship on the facts, so what matters is the material: distance, the child’s age and school, health, income, and who else is available to travel.

Raise it at the very beginning. Attending four hearings a thousand kilometres away and then asking to transfer is both expensive and a weaker application than the same one made at once.

Living abroad, and appearing from there

Video appearance in family matters is done and the arrangements have widened considerably in recent years, but it remains a permission to be applied for rather than a default. The person who books flights around a listed date and discovers the date has shifted has learned this the expensive way.

The other half of it is service. Getting papers properly served on somebody outside India takes longer than anybody expects and is one of the commonest reasons a matter sits still for a year. Start it early and do it properly, because service done badly is service that gets challenged later and undone.

Documents from abroad may need translation and, depending on what they are, attestation — arrange both in advance rather than on the hearing date. Where the marriage itself was registered abroad, keep the marriage certificate and its attestations in the file from day one.

When the order is not obeyed

The last thing nobody plans for. An order directing payment, or handover of a document, or access on particular days, is a direction. Where it is ignored, somebody has to enforce it, and that is a fresh proceeding — we prepare execution petition papers.

Where what is being ignored concerns a child — access refused, handovers not happening — do not absorb it for six months and then complain about a pattern. Take it back to counsel while it is one instance and the dates are fresh. A contemporaneous record of each missed handover, with the date and what was said, is worth more than a general account given later.

What this court will not do for you

Worth saying plainly, because a good deal of unhappiness comes from expecting the wrong thing.

• It will not declare who was right about the marriage. Nobody gets that, and the search for it is what makes these cases last for years.
• It will not punish the other side. Where conduct amounts to an offence, that is a separate proceeding in a different place.
• It will not compel affection, contact or a relationship — it can order arrangements, which is a different thing.
• It will not undo a bargain you consented to.
• It will not reward the party who documents the other’s faults most thoroughly. That file is usually read as being about its author.

Where Delhi’s Family Courts sit

Within the district court complexes rather than in a campus of their own, and which one your matter is at follows from the jurisdiction rules rather than from what is nearest to you.

No room numbers, timings or allocation charts appear here, for the same reason they appear nowhere on this site — they are administrative and they change, and a stale line sends somebody to the wrong building on a day that matters. Confirm from your own summons or the cause list.

The hearing day

Count security screening separately from the journey, carry government photo identity, and arrive early enough to find your advocate before the court assembles rather than after.

Two things particular to this court. If you are anxious about encountering the other side or their family in the corridor, say so in advance so that something can be arranged. And bring somebody supportive with you if you can — not to speak, not to come inside, just to be there. These are long, draining mornings and going through them alone is harder than people expect.

Free legal services, which matter most in this court

The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 sets out who may claim free legal services, income is no bar at all for a woman, and there is a legal services desk inside the court complexes. The numbers are 1516 within Delhi and 15100 nationally.

This belongs on this page more than on any other. Section 13 removed the entitlement to a lawyer; it never intended that the party with money would have one and the party without would not. If that is the position you are in, ask at the desk before your next date.

Speaking in your own language

A small thing that causes real distress. People arrive believing they must give evidence in English, rehearse in a language they are not comfortable in, and then stumble over the one account that matters.

You do not have to. Courts in Delhi work in Hindi and English, proceedings are conducted so that parties can be understood, and saying something accurately in the language you think in is worth far more than saying it awkwardly in one you do not. Tell your advocate beforehand which you are comfortable in, and if you speak neither well, say that in advance rather than on the day so an arrangement can be made.

Documents are a separate matter and they are on you. Anything not in the language of the proceeding needs a proper translation prepared in advance — a marriage certificate from another state, a school record, a foreign document — rather than being handed over untranslated with an explanation.

The folder, and the one page at the front

From the first notice: the petition and every pleading, every order, every application and what happened to it, the marriage documents, identity and address documents, the income documents of both sides as they come, the child’s school and medical records, and the correspondence.

At the front, one page: date, what happened, what was directed, what is due next and from whom. These cases run for years across many small hearings, and the person who can answer “what were you directed to file on the 14th” in five seconds is in a different position from the person who cannot. Scan as you go, and keep the originals yourself.

The things that go wrong most often here

What to have ready before drafting anything

The marriage certificate or proof of the marriage, and where it was solemnised. Identity and address proof of both parties. Children’s birth certificates, school records and medical records. Income documents of both sides in whatever form exists. Property and asset documents. Any earlier order, notice or complaint in any proceeding between the same parties. The correspondence, complete rather than in extracts.

Add affidavits sworn before an oath commissioner in the form required, and translations of anything not in the language of the proceeding, prepared in advance. One spelling of every name across every document — in matrimonial files, where names appear in a marriage certificate, a passport and a school record, mismatches are common and each one costs a hearing.

The half of this that is ours

Documentation and filing support, and nothing further. Nobody here is an advocate, nobody appears before a Family Court, and nobody attends a counselling session with anybody. Our work is the paper: the petition and applications typed and drawn to counsel’s instructions, the reply, the affidavits and their swearing, settlement agreements and mutual divorce documentation drafted with the terms stated properly, annexures indexed and paginated, translations, and certified copies when orders come.

What is said inside the room, and whether a bargain is a good one, belongs to your advocate. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. Section 13 or not, if this matter is contested, engage somebody — the directory is free to open and free to write through, it runs A to Z, and no listing on it was bought.

Where we stop, in matters like this one

What we charge, told to you first

Every document has its own figure and it is printed on that document’s service page, where you can read it before ordering anything at all. Court fee and anything else levied by an office is shown apart from our figure, because that money is paid to them and never passes through us.

The total is stated before the work begins and nothing is payable in advance. And where somebody calls us in the middle of the worst week of their life wanting to file immediately, what we usually say is: speak to an advocate first, and let the paperwork follow the advice rather than lead it. That call costs nothing.