Shared household is defined in the Act as follows:
"shared household" means a household where the person aggrieved lives or at any stage has lived in a domestic relationship either singly or along with the respondent and includes such a household whether owned or tenanted either jointly by the aggrieved person and the respondent, or owned or tenanted by either of them in respect of which either the aggrieved person or the respondent or both jointly or singly have any right, title, interest or equity and includes such a household which may belong to the joint family of which the respondent is a member, irrespective of whether the respondent or the aggrieved person has any right, title or interest in the shared household;
The above definition stipulates the following conditions to the wife to seek the rights in shared household:
1. Both husband and wife must have been living or in the past lived together in the house. It does not require that at the time of filing the application or at the time of passing the order they must be living in that place. Even in the past also, if they lived together, the wife is entitled to seek the relief.
2. The house may be tenanted by the husband or owned by husband. or
3. If the husband has lived in that house as a member of joint family along with his wife before estrangement and in fact husband does not have any right, tile or interest in the household - means it is in the name of wife's father-in-law or mother-in-law - then also as both husband and wife lived together in matrimonial relationship, the wife can seek the relief of shared household.
Why expressly the third condition has been laid down in the law is for the reason that if father-in-law, mother-in-law collude with the husband and husband in the pretext of disowning his parents go away from the matrimonial home to some shaddy, shabby and unhygenic rented home just with an intention of depriving the wife of the right of shared household. When she seeks the relief from the court, he dumps his wife in that dungeon, he surreptiously crawls back to his parental home. This is called hoodwinking the court. If the wife succeeds to explain the court about the vitious game plan hatched by the husband to deprive her of decent living in hitherto matrimonial home, the court will rubbishes the husband's claim of providing rental accommodation to the wife and provides her the relief of shared household in matrimonial home.
While seeking the shared household relief, go through the judgment passed by the hon'ble Supreme Court in Tarun Batra's case, where certain caveats are imposed on the wife and how to overcome them. You need not bother about Justice Dhingra's judgment as it was a single judge's decision, that too only from High Court and even Delhi lower judiciary has long back stopped to take this decision seriously.
