Abstract
In India, family, maintenance, domestic violence, and criminal law have historically been anchored in marriage. But the growing acceptance of live-in relationships has raised a difficult question: should partners in a non-solemnised relationship be left without protection merely because they have not married? This article examines the recognition of live-in relationships under Indian constitutional, statutory, and criminal law. It considers the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, the tests laid down in D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal and Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, and the Supreme Court’s recent extension of cruelty-law protection in Lokesh B.H. v. State of Karnataka. The article argues that Indian jurisprudence is gradually expanding the meaning of “family” to include functional, dependent, and domestic relationships beyond formal wedlock. However, protection remains conditional, largely gender-specific, and dependent on uncertain evidentiary standards.
Introduction
In Indian law, the family has traditionally been assumed to begin with marriage. Marriage has determined legitimacy, inheritance, maintenance, guardianship, and several protections under criminal law. Live-in relationships disturb this assumption because they often involve the same realities of family life cohabitation, financial dependence, emotional intimacy, domestic work, and sometimes children without the formal status of marriage.
Indian courts have increasingly accepted that consenting adults may choose to live together without marrying. At the same time, they have not treated every non-marital relationship as equivalent to marriage. Instead, a conditional category has emerged: the “relationship in the nature of marriage.” This category allows certain vulnerable partners, mainly women, to seek protection under welfare legislation and, more recently, criminal law. The central legal question is not whether live-in relationships are socially desirable, but how far the law should go to protect those within them.
Constitutional Liberty and Personal Autonomy
The constitutional basis for recognising live-in relationships lies in personal liberty, dignity, and privacy under Article 21. But the last word on privacy was delivered by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India that held that privacy encompasses personal choices and decisional autonomy. While the principles enunciated by the Court in this case did not directly concern live-in relationships, they reinforce the argument that the State ought not to stigmatise or criminalise intimate consensual associations between adults simply because they diverge from the nuclear family model.
Articles 14 and 15 reinforce this position by requiring equality and prohibiting arbitrary State action. A framework that protects a married woman from cruelty but leaves an equally vulnerable woman in a long-term, marriage-like relationship unprotected may create an unjustifiable distinction. The courts’ gradual extension of protection to live-in partners can therefore be seen as an effort to bring family law closer to constitutional values of dignity and non-discrimination.
Still, constitutional liberty does not by itself create civil or criminal rights. Autonomy protects the choice to cohabit; maintenance, property rights, and criminal liability require statutory provisions or judicial interpretation.
Protection under the Domestic Violence Act
The most important statutory recognition of live-in relationships is found in the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 (“DV Act”). Section 2(a) defines an “aggrieved person” as a woman who is, or has been, in a domestic relationship with the respondent and alleges domestic violence. Section 2(f) defines a “domestic relationship” as one between persons living or having lived together in a shared household, related by consanguinity, marriage, a relationship in the nature of marriage, adoption, or as members of a joint family.
The DV Act therefore does not require a valid marriage. A woman in a qualifying live-in relationship may seek civil remedies, including protection orders, residence orders, monetary relief, custody orders, and compensation. The Act aims to secure a woman’s right to reside in a shared household and to protect her from economic, emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.
This framework is significant because it locates vulnerability in the shared home rather than in the marriage certificate. In that sense, the DV Act recognises a functional idea of family. Yet its protection is not universal. It applies to an “aggrieved person” defined as a woman and to a respondent in a domestic relationship with her. This wording raises difficult questions for same-sex partners and gender-diverse persons, whose intimate relationships may be equally vulnerable but fall outside the Act’s express language.
Judicial Tests: Velusamy and Indra Sarma
In D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, the Supreme Court held that not every casual or temporary relationship amounts to a “relationship in the nature of marriage.” The Court required that the parties hold themselves out to society as husband and wife, be of legal age to marry, be otherwise qualified to enter a valid marriage, and have voluntarily cohabited for a reasonable period in the manner of husband and wife.
In Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, the Court elaborated on these requirements. Relating factors such as the length of the relationship, the sharing of household, pooling of resources, arrangement of the domestic unit, sexual relationship, children, social recognition, and the intention and conduct of the parties. The Court in addition, also held that a woman who engaged knowingly in a relationship with a married man, would not receive complete protection from the DV Act, because it did not satisfy the second criterion, that both parties are legally capable of getting married.
The creation of these choice points generates a paradox; while protecting women in long-term, marriage-like relationships, courts also uphold the demarcation of the boundary of marriage by refusing protection to those relationships that are inconsistent with, or do not possess the outward characteristics of, marriage. The result is a middle category: not marriage, but close enough to attract limited protection.
Limits and the Need for Reform
However, these cases have also continued to highlight the patchiness of the law. While the DV Act extended protection to partners, not just women, the requirement of an intention to marry in cases like Lokesh B.H. means that partners who are not earning independently, as in some short-term relationships, will not qualify for that protection. Same sex partnerships as well as non-binary partners may also continue to fall outside that framework.
A more coherent approach would include a statutory test for recognising a relationship in the nature of marriage, protection based on vulnerability and interdependence rather than gender alone, and objective evidentiary safeguards against misuse. Such reform would not undermine marriage; it would simply acknowledge that family-like dependence can exist without a marriage certificate.
Conclusion
Indian law is changing not by displacing marriage, but by moving away from the idea that marriage is the only site of domestic vulnerability. The DV Act, Velusamy, Indra Sarma, and Lokesh B.H. show a shift from a purely formal understanding of family to one based on cohabitation, dependence, and marriage-like conduct. Yet the protection available remains partial. The law distinguishes between some live-in partners-especially women in long-term, marriage-like relations with an express intent to marry-and others who are not protected. An improved, unifying legal framework, which provides that protection to all vulnerable partners, must recognise the special legal significance of live-in relationships.
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WRITTEN BY: AASTHA KEDIA
