Recognition Of Live-In Relationships In India: Judicial Trends And Legal Challenges
- IJLLR Journal
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read
Shrey Puri, B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons.), Bharati Vidyapeeth University
ABSTRACT
Indian law has never enacted a general statute defining or governing the live-in relationship— the consensual cohabitation of two adults outside marriage. Its recognition has instead been the work of the judiciary, which, drawing on the guarantee of life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution and the fundamental right to privacy, has progressively carved out a protected space for cohabitation beyond wedlock. This paper traces that evolution and the challenges it has left unresolved. It begins with the evidentiary presumption of marriage arising from long cohabitation, recognised by the Supreme Court as early as 1978, and moves to the decisive rulings in Lata Singh and S. Khushboo, which separated the legality of live-in relationships from questions of social morality and affirmed that consensual cohabitation is neither an offence nor, in the eyes of the law, immoral. It then examines the indirect statutory recognition achieved through the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, and the influential tests for a “relationship in the nature of marriage” laid down in D. Velusamy and refined in Indra Sarma, together with the maintenance and inheritance rights that have crystallised around such unions and the settled protection now extended to their children. The paper argues, however, that recognition remains uneven. The High Courts have diverged sharply in petitions by couples seeking protection from hostile families, some invoking constitutional autonomy and others the preservation of the “social fabric”, with the inconsistency compounded where relationships are inter-faith. The Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand Act, 2024 marks a decisive statutory turn by making the registration of live- in relationships compulsory on pain of penalty, raising fresh questions of privacy, autonomy and State surveillance. The paper concludes that, notwithstanding significant judicial advances, the field is beset by conceptual uncertainty and an unresolved tension between individual liberty and social regulation, and that a coherent, rights-respecting framework is overdue.
Keywords: Live-in Relationships; Article 21 and the Right to Privacy; Relationship in the Nature of Marriage; Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005; Uniform Civil Code of Uttarakhand; Judicial Recognition.
