The Rajasthan High Court on Wednesday (January 29, 2025) directed the State government to look into setting up an authority in each district to register live-in relationships until the government can bring “appropriate legislation” that governs such relationships.

A single-judge Bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand noted in the order that the need of the hour was to frame a law to “grant rights and impose obligations on the part of the couples in such relationship”, a law that is “competent enough to grant assistance to the children and female partners who become sufferers in such relationships”.

Opinion | Live and let live-in

Justice Dhand’s order came on a batch of petitions that dealt with couples in live-in relationships “facing threat and danger from their families and the society for not accepting their relationship”. Justice Dhand asked for the order to be served to the Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary, Law and Justice of the Rajasthan government and the Union Social Justice Secretary, seeking a compliance report by March 1.

Till such a law can be brought in, this registering authority should be able to “address and redress the grievances of such partners/couples who have entered in such relationship and the children being born out therefrom,” the court said, adding that a website could be launched to redress these issues.

Conflicting opinions

The court considered the legal question of whether couples in live-in relationships where one of the partners is still married are entitled to the protection of the court, noting the diversity of judicial views and referring this question to the Chief Justice so it could be placed before a Special or larger Bench.

“There is no exact and settled decision of this Court on the legal issue involved in this petition, rather there are conflicting opinions and views of different Co-ordinate Benches of this Court, hence, the same is required to be decided for all times to come, so that there should be uniformity in the orders on the said legal issue involved in these petitions,” the court said.

Couples facing threats

In the order, Justice Dhand noted that as India was “opening its doors to western ideas”, one of them was that of live-in relationships. “Several couples are residing in ‘live-in-relationship’ and are facing threat and danger from their families and the society for not accepting their relationship,” the court said, adding that this was resulting in courts being “inundated with such petitions”.

“It appears that the Police agencies are overburdened with investigation and the responsibility of maintaining law and order, hence, they hardly get any time to redress the grievance of the aggrieved, but certainly this cannot be a ground for denial, on their part, to look into the matter and decide the representation of such persons by passing appropriate orders,” the court said.

Appropriate laws needed

The court noted that there is no separate legislation which lays down “provisions” for live-in relationships or which provide legality to the concept or that protect female partners and children born out of these relationships. Hence, the appropriate legislation is required to be brought in by both the Centre and the State, the court said.

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Justice Dhand also noted that the recently enacted Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand “deals with the entire process and procedure with regard to such relationships and it also deals with the liabilities of the couples residing in such relationships”.

The court also suggested that the appropriate authorities could prepare a format that could be required by couples to fill in before entering a live-in relationship. This format should have terms and conditions that fix liability on the couple to raise the children born out of the relationship and bear the expenses of their education, health, and upbringing. It should also fix liability on the male partner to provide maintenance to the non-earning female partner and for children born out of such relationships, the order said.