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Hemant Agarwal (ha21@rediffmail.com Mumbai : 9820174108)     19 February 2010

Divorced woman can’t use Husband’s name : HC

Dear All,
 

 

This was reported in  "Times of India,  dated 19 February'2010, Mumbai edition, page 01".
(read article, as reproduced below)

 

MY PERCEPTONS :
1.  The name change HC order, is not applicable  IF  the Husband has died and neither the wife can be addressed as EX-wife.   In case of husbands death (where the marriage contract is still running),  the wife has legal right to use her husbands name  TILL SHE REMARRIES.

 

*  HUSBAND DEATH is  NOT  equal to Divorce  (retains all heir'ercal rights, under HSAct).

* *  WOMAN REMARRY  IS  equal to Divorce  (Forefeits all heir'ercal rights, under HSAct).

 


2.  Similarly,  a Woman  "AFTER"   marriage CANNOT continue using her  "maiden surname" (her fathers surname).  She is compulsorily bound by Law (and now by the latest HC order)  to change her old maiden surname  INTO  her latest married surname (which happens by legal default).

 

There is no provision under ANY Indian law to retain two different surnames. IT is a legal offfence of  intentional "Misrepresentation" and "Fraud",  when done so for purposes of Passport, Ration Card, Pan card, Bank account, Business registrations etc...

 

The Passport or the Ration Card or the Pan Card or the Bank Account or the Sales Tax/ Profession Tax / Excise  registration  cannot be done with a alien name (maiden name)  since that name is non-existant (in the law of court)  AND NEITHER  such registration authorities will register anything in the maiden name,  IF IT IS PROVED THAT THE WOMAN IS PRESENTLY UNDER RUNNING MARRIAGE CONTRACT, under another surname.

 

HOWEVER, IF YOU ARE LIVING IN A WORLD OF ILLUSION AND HALLUCINATION, like the world of  Modelling, Film Industry, Call Girl  or  P o r n industry,  or other fly-by-night industry or any other industry run by the gangsters (D-company),  you can then definetely have several maiden names and several surnames, without any restrictions   (Pun intended).

 


3.  IF  the female,  freshly continues to use her maiden name, after marriage,  it is a legal offfence of  intentional "Misrepresentation" and "Fraud",  when done so for purposes of Passport, Ration Card, Pan card, Bank account, Business registrations etc...

 

4.  A child (legal heir) born after such "legal or illegal"  wedlock,  WILL HAVE TO COMPULSORILY continue using his mothers husbands surname, EVEN IF THE MOTHER HAS DIVORCED THE CHILD'S FATHER.     - BUT -the woman CANNOT continue using the child's father's (her former husband) surname after Divorce.

 

5.  After Divorce,  "IF"   the mother remarries and also changes the surname of her partioned-custody-child and thereby giving him a gazetted new surname of her latest new husband,   THEN THE CHILD LOSES HIS  "INHERITANCE  RIGHTS"  over his original bio-logical father (whether Dead or Alive). 

The child CANNOT have two inheritance rights : 

i.e.  one inheritance right of his earlier bio-logical father,  and  another inheritance right of / due to his latest surname of his step-father.

 

6.  Similarly, the  Woman loses ALL  "INHERITANCE RIGHTS"   immediately after the divorce decree has been passed,  EVEN SPECIALLY IF THE HUSBAND DIES ACCIDENTLY or otherwise, AFTER SUCH DIVORCE DECREE is passed.


Keep Smiling .... Hemant Agarwal

 

 

Divorced woman can’t use ex’s name : HC
("Times of India,  dated 19 February'2010, Mumbai edition, page 01")

 

Mumbai: What’s in a name? The famous Shakespearean line popped up during an acrimonious court proceeding on Wednesday.
 

 

“A lot,’’ said an aggrieved man, especially when my ex-wife is misusing it. The Bombay high court agreed and passed a rare order that might make divorced men smile. The court directed a divorced woman to stop using her former husband’s name and surname. The HC also clarified that the “ex-wife cannot use the husband’s name anywhere, including in her bank account’’.
 

 

   The judgment was passed by Justice Roshan Dalvi as she dismissed a petition filed by a woman challenging an interim order of the Bandra family court. R R Vachha, principal judge of the family court in Mumbai, had last September restrained the woman from using her ex-husband’s name and surname as their marriage had ended four years ago. “By using the ex-husband’s name or surname, there is always a possibility of people being misled that she is still the wife,when in fact she is not,’’ said Vachha. The HC upheld the family court order and said it need not be interfered with but should be given effect to “for all purposes’’.

 

Man says ex using his name to embarrass him

 Mumbai: The legal battle over names between the Mumbai couple arose a year after the family court in February 2006 granted them divorce and the HC finalised it the same year. But the wife says she has moved the supreme court where the matter is pending; she claimed she was still his wife.
 

    The couple had begun their divorce fight in 1996 after staying together for a little over six months. When after their divorce, the woman filed for more maintenance, the husband—a 49-year-old police inspector—contended through his lawyers Ramesh and Sadhana Lalwani that his ex-wife continued to use his name even though she was no longer legally his wife and sought that she be restrained from doing so.
 

    The man alleged that she was “mischievously posing as his wife, entering into altercations and caused embarrassing situations for him’’. He produced a news report from a local paper in his native village in Maharashtra about one such act of hers and said in villages where people were known by their family names, such behaviour affected not only him but also his entire family.
 

   The Lalwanis also argued that since the woman was not a wife anymore, she was not entitled to tag on her ex-husband’s name and surname to her own as it would be misleading. The wife argued that her ex was merely being “malicious and trying to malign’’ her.

 


   The family court held that “the marriage had come to an end by virtue of the orders of two courts, but still the woman claimed to be the wife’’. Observing that the issue arose out of a marital relationship, it restrained her from using the ex-husband’s name.
 

 

   The woman immediately moved the high court in appeal and said the family court order was wrong. Her lawyer Milin Jadhav, the HC said, “fairly concedes that since the marriage has been dissolved by a decree for divorce which has become final, the wife cannot use the name of the husband’’. He had also said that the bank account of the wife stood in both her maiden and married names.

 


   Justice Dalvi observed that “this itself shows that the wife uses the name of the ex-husband even after their marital relationship has been dissolved by a court order’’ and significantly held that “the descripttion of the bank account was improper and the family court order had to be adhered to’’.

 

SIMPLE CHANGE   

Changing a name is not that difficult as it may seem
 

   Once a divorce decree is in hand, a woman can change her name after divorce and even after remarriage
 

   For instance when applying for her passport she can apply for change of name/surname by furnishing a copy of a divorce decree and fill out particular form given as an annexure in the application documents
 

   The change of name has to be done at the government printing press office in the gazette and an insert of it in two daily newspapers is a must.



Learning

 4 Replies

Raj Kumar Makkad (Adv P & H High Court Chandigarh)     19 February 2010

good information.

Suchitra. S (Advocate)     19 February 2010

Thanks for the information, hemanth ji.

Hemant Agarwal (ha21@rediffmail.com Mumbai : 9820174108)     04 October 2011

LEGAL   NUISANCE   .or.  WHAT

 

Divorcees can retain surnames
(reproduced from Times of India, Mumbai edition dated 03-10-2011, page no. 01)


Mumbai:Divorced woman have a reason to cheer. No authority can prevent them from continuing to use, for legally valid purposes, their former married surnames.


   “The wife has a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India (right to life) to use any name including her married name notwithstanding the fact that her marriage has been dissolved,” said additional solicitor general Darius Khambata in a legal opinion to the Mumbai regional passport office (RPO). The legal position thus clarified, the passport office finally reversed its earlier stand and issued a divorced Pune woman a renewed passport in her former married surname this week.


   The passport office had earlier this year denied a Pune woman her constitutional right to use her name, even though her former husband had no objection to its use. The RPO had referred the matter to the law ministry. The authority appeared to rely on a report of a February 2010 Bombay high court order that stopped one divorced woman from using her married name after her ex-husband specifically objected to it. In June, women’s activist and advocate Flavia Agnes wrote to the passport office and sought legal validity of its refusal to issue Rina D’Mello (name changed) her passport in her married name. In August Khambata, answering the passport officer’s query, said it “was wrong to insist on issuing the passport in her maiden name”.


‘Insistence on maiden name hits divorcees’


Mumbai: Additional solicitor-general Darius Khambata has said the passport office can issue the passport in the wife’s married name, given that her reasons “appear genuine” and her husband had no objection.


   The regional passport office had insisted on renewing Rina D’Mello’s (name changed) passport in her maiden name when her bank account,flat, ration card, passport, voter card and even her signature were all in her former married name. A change would mean “immense hardship” apart from violation of her constitutional right, said activist Flavia Agnes. She said many women had suffered because of this approach.


   Khambata, to whom the law ministry had referred the matter said each case would have to be considered on its own facts. “There is no general rule for the passport authority to reject an application by a divorced woman for a passport in her erstwhile married name. A wife could be restrained from using her married name only if she used that name to deceive or mislead any authority or the world at large or if the use of that name led to any misuse.”


   In the HC case relied on by the passport authority, the husband had specifically objected to his ex-wife’s use of the married name, Khambata pointed out and said the case was “distinguishable on facts”.


   Not passport officers alone, several other authorities too have been “harassing” divorced woman over the use of married surnames for over a year, said women activists. But now, the path is clear for divorced woman to retain their married surnames and an “unnecessary controversy is closed”, said a family court lawyer.

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