Advice to men on 498a, maintenance, DV, divorce, child custody, what else

A picture is worth a 1000 words, so we start our advice to men post with above picture.   Studying above picture for 5 minutes will give you as much benefit as reading the whole of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, because you have most probably come here as a ‘victim of biased laws’, ‘harassed husband’, etc. etc. , and you are not a military general anyway; though one of these days one of them may also land up here!  I deliberately edited out the woman’s butt so you don’t spend the 5 minutes looking there

Update history

This is meant to be a mega-post / mega-article to be written in phases, and eventually it will be the main post on men’s rights having links to other posts on specific topics.  Following is a history of updates for repeat visitors.

2-Oct-2014: Section Encyclopaedia of false cases and marriage breakups.  Added this new section on typical patterns/incidents found in false cases/marriages heading for eventual breakup

26-Oct-2014: Added sections on how to deal with pressure to compromise by CAW cell/police/advocates/judges,  Added section on taking stand of Innocent until proven guilty with links to full posts too

21-Nov-2014: Added sections on Bring back wife phase, RCR/legal notice phase, and some diagrams on legal approaches taken by men/their pitfalls.  Also child custody related approach (diagrams only) yet.

03-Apr-2015: Added section on handling maintenance cases under CrPC 125, DV.  Also a section on why filing divorce can be a useless exercise for most husbands.

Original post continues below…

So dear friends, this advice to men post is somewhat of a misnomer, since it is neither my lecture to anyone nor advice in the sense of prescriptive medicine; but more about sharing of my opinion and thoughts developed over many years having seen and discussed many cases with men, and from my own experience of the System.

What is this thing called the System, so often used by MRAs (Men’s Rights Activists).  The system is the the whole of the web, the environment, the terrain, the network, or matrix so to speak for The Matrix fans; where the patni-peedit (husband harassed by wife) finds himself enmeshed once his wife threatens or actually goes legal on him.   It is a whole combination of society’s attitudes, law courts, police, media, attitudes, conventional (lack of) wisdom which the man gets embroiled in.

Understanding your environment

So first we have to understand the System, or as the above image mentions — “Understanding your environment”.  The above image is created by someone living in Western society, but the important points will probably apply anywhere to more or less degree.

“Wait a minute”, the impatient ones are asking by now.  Where is the advice on how to get 498a FIR quashed?  How do I save maintenance because my wife is actually working but she is lying in court that she is jobless?  “You know, I didn’t take anything in dowry, in fact we spent most of the marriage expenses”.   Have patience my friend, this post may seem like a mini-saga of sorts, but reading it from start to finish will pay dividends.  The impatient ones can try one more google search about “maintenance denied judgment”, it’s not going to help.

What what are the main actors we have in the environment?  White Knights, MRAs, MGTOWs.  You can throw in a few more like beta males, Alpha Males, masculinists etc.  We will keep discussing them in the post.

Once we understand the main actors in the environment, it gives a fresh perspective on understanding situations like the following:

1. The judge understood that the case may be false, but still he gave high maintenance to wife.  What else will a survivor white knight do?
2. The police cops took my wife’s complaint even though there was all evidence against it.  If you look at salaries they are paid and their working hours, the police are in truth the beta males in India, inspite of the image of being tough protectors of society.  With corruption all around and pressures on them, it wouldn’t take long for any police person to be a little ‘aspirational’ so to speak, take a bribe to file complaint, and feel like a victor rather than a victim.
3. We met the MPs and politicians, and they agree in private that the laws are being misused, but they don’t speak against them in parliament.  In fact, they supported and voted for legislation like Irretrievable Breakdown of Marriage bill in parliament.  Again, they are protecting and enhancing their alpha male (or alpha female) status by trying to show white knightery towards the females in society.

So friends, this framework is not about how to diagnose or complaint about a particular branch of government, police, lawyers, judiciary etc. but about understanding the motivations and psychology of individuals and how these affects rights of men.  Any government department is run by individuals who come together in an organisation, and the organisation’s actions will not be very different or divergent from the motivations and psychology of the majority of individuals who run it.

E.g. I heard a case about some senior person in Army approaching an MRA, and saying that he always used to support the woman whenever there was a complaint against an army man by his wife, and now he is facing the situation that his daughter-in-law has filed complaint against his son!  Well done sir, must have felt real great being a white knight to all the damsels in distress in the army.  Welcome to 21st century and reality of life… it’s never too late to open your eyes and learn when your own son faces the music!

I didn’t even define what a white knight is, and if it’s not clear by now, he is like the protector of woman, the hero so to speak in some older Hindi movies, who will appear from nowhere to fight and ward off the attackers and molesters of the ‘heroine’; thereby winning her admiration and cementing his role in her eyes as her future protector, white knight, and whatever else.

Of course, no one is a white knight in all situations throughout, as our Army senior discovered a bit late in life; but men must understand that being a white knight is both a genetic programming hardwired into male species, as well as a cultural programming done to boys and men in all societies and cultures.  Which is to evaluate a man’s worth by how much he can provide for and protect a woman, and beyond that women in general.  When a 4 year old boy is admonished for crying “Don’t cry like a girl”, his cultural programming has started already since how can a man who himself cries be able to protect anyone else!  One day he may be required to give his life for his family, tribe, village, city, country; so the programming begins at early age.  Some MGTOWs and MRAs have termed it as emotional castration.

Don’t leave a soldier behind, leaving everyone else’s fine though

There is a kind of principle or ethos followed in militaries of the world: that if a soldier has fallen wounded or captured, you get him out of danger or get him out of captivity.

The above is a cultural or training artefact, not a normal human response.  A normal human response would be to protect oneself first rather than endangering one’s own welfare or life for some unknown person.  That exactly is the response of all the actors in the great game of women empowerment via false cases on husbands:

1. The judge blindly gives some interim maintenance to wife though evidence points to her leaving the husband voluntarily rather than of any domestic violence as alleged.  The judge is protecting own interest, which is to go with the fashion and flow of ‘women empowerment’ theme.  Also, it is safe option too with no danger of some women’s NGO (or own wife) doing protest outside his home or in his court.
2. The policeman or policewoman is also busy making hay while the sun shines.  The other day got a call from a husband and family on the run from police in Koppal district of Karnataka due to 498a case, where the police senior being reminded of recent SC judgment against automatic arrest is said to have told him that “here there is no rule of SC, it is district police which rules here”.

Reason vs. Power, Logic vs. Coercion

So our great judges and police people believe in that as long as it doesn’t threaten and in fact enhances their well-being, it is alright to let someone else get misery.  So whenever someone acts like that, they are not being reasonable in a normal social or ethical sense.  They might be perfectly reasonable in a selfish sense though.  The mighty policeman believes in might is right.  The judge relies on almost guaranteed tenure till retirement and little chance of damage to career based on few appeals to higher courts which may overturn his judgement.

Logic and reason with such people will not work.  Whether they are white knights or alpha kinds, they can be tackled with might or with tact as the situation demands.  The mighty police can be brought to the ground by filing 1-2 RTIs.  With recent SC judgment against automatic arrest in 498a and crimes less than 7 years punishment, police should or would learn in due course of time that threat of arbitrarily arresting or actually arresting someone is a game which made money for them while it did, but that game is going to be over soon.

For tackling the judiciary, the best course as of now is not really anything about procedure of courts or judicial mechanisms, but about spending time and energy improving yourselves in other parts of the game.  A lot of this post will cover those things.

Knowing yourself

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

from Chapter 3, The Art of War – Sun Tzu

Now we start on something more important than knowing the System, which is knowing yourself.  The logically oriented among us may notice that Mr Sun Tzu wisely left out the possible combination where a person knows enemy but not knows oneself.  I mean that would be absurd, like a chess grandmaster knowing all the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, but not knowing own strengths and weaknesses!  He (most grandmasters are men, and it’s not because of patriarchy!) wouldn’t have reached thus far and become a chess grandmaster if he didn’t know own strengths!

Unfortunately, I see still that many people fall into this trap of focussing too much on the wife/in-laws, and thinking about what counter case etc. they can file on them, blissfully being unaware that they don’t have any preparation or strength to follow up on it.  They say in an unsure tone, “Right now she only has filed cases, if I also file a divorce case on her maybe they will also feel harassed”.  Maybe, or maybe she could file one more maintenance case on you under HMA 24 apart from existing CrPC 125 or DV case.  Then our man will call the MRAs again asking, “she is already getting maintenance in one case, can she ask for maintenance again”.  Well, only if you had listened to our advice on not to file divorce!

Right vs. wrong, Expedient vs. Right

Question: Can you tell what is right from what is wrong,  I mean in ethical or even common sense?

Probable Answer: Oh haan-ji, we are all descendants of a great civilization, we have the Geeta, Vedas, Upanishads and what not, we can teach the whole world on what’s right and what’s wrong.

Most likely Answer: What an asshole?  I am facing a false 498a, DV case, I have old/sick parents to take care of; and he is asking about right and wrong.  Of course I am innocent, I didn’t take a single Rupee in dowry.  In fact when she left she took our jewellery also.  I should search google for “professional honest good advocate for 498a” or “how to win maintenance case for husband” instead.

Well.  Teaching the whole world can wait.  And my question was not about whether you are innocent or not.  It was about whether you know the difference between right and wrong.  Most of the time, people are confusing what is expedient for what must be right.  E.g. judge asked me to pay 12 lakh (or 10 lakh, whatever) to court to get anticipatory bail (AB), and I need bail, so it is right to pay 10 lakh.  WRONG!  It was only expedient.  The System has already trapped you by your making that decision, and from here on it’s very difficult to avoid the slide downhill towards eventual financial ‘settlement’ to wife.

And if that species called good, professional, honest lawyer existed, you wouldn’t have been reading this post so far!  We could have created a one page website called http://trusted498alawyers.com and sent everyone there instead of taking calls from fresh patni peedit ‘victims’ on Sunday mornings.

This part to be continued…

Encyclopaedia of false cases and marriage breakups

For all the ‘498a victims’, ‘harassed by wife’, ‘harassed by 498a’, ‘harassed victim of in-laws’, ‘victim of biased laws’ etc etc; I am now making public the information about most common patterns of these false cases.  Previously I had shared a bit of this information within closed groups but I don’t see a reason why it can’t be in public domain.  I don’t foresee IB or CBI doing a secret inquiry or someone filing PIL against this either.   Maybe someone like Kapil Sibal would have deemed all this fit enough to be censored, but he is back into practising law rather than being a politician thanks to the drubbing Congress got in 2014 elections, so I sincerely hope he got the public’s message.

First of all a clarification that I never like to use the word ‘victim’ for any person suffering false cases and men’s rights issues; if I use the word ‘victim’ it is always in quotes.  Some activists may give you better hearing if you are using words like ‘victim’ and ‘harassed’, I like to ‘help’ those with names and attitudes of the kind – ‘terminator’, ‘fighter’, ‘warrior’ etc.  There are reasons behind avoiding word ‘victim’ which I will detail in another post sometime.

Common pattern seen in 80-90% of cases

1. The issues like separate living by wife, unnecessary fights over almost non-issues, threat of legal cases, actual maintenance/DV case, or even 498a/406 case or happen within 1-2 years of marriage.  The order and combination of above can vary.  But one of them at the least will happen and even if no legal case is filed, at least the wife going and living separate in her parents’ house for more than few months, and maybe several times, will definitely happen.  Take it as warning sign that marriage breakup is a high probability in future.  DO NOT listen to anyone’s advice that having a child will help the relationship.  Having a child will give them a weapon to later lay claim on your property and whatever else and public and society’s sympathy automatically shifts to the mother.
2. The most common age group of men is between 28-32 years of age, or better way would be to take it as 1-2 years after usual marriage age in your region/state.  So if men marry around 28-30 years in your state, expect most cases within 30-32 years in that state.

Phase 1: kick out his parents, train him to be a pet

This is the first phase of marriage for the wives on a mission.  Yes, it’s a mission for them, like a proverbial vish-kanya they have been trained (or maybe lack of training whichever you prefer) to act as poison in a relationship.

For those couples where parents don’t stay with them due to life in different city, the mission is simpler which is to train the husband to be a slave.  Below are the typical characteristics found.  Note that this is applicable to 80% of cases we see, there will always exceptions especially in longer marriages which I will detail in another post sometime.  Based on my assessment, longer marriage is anything more than 4 years with no major separate living in between.  The patterns and incidents become much different in them.  But for all shorter marriages of 1-2 (or even 3 years with long periods of separate living in between), below is a good indication of what to expect.  It is completely routine stuff, YOU are not the only one!

The specifics of incidents or demands in initial 6 months to 2 years

Leave it to the imaginative minds of the self-loathing and the feminist types, because even when there are no issues in life they can dream about and create an issue almost out of thin air.  It is all pre-planned with goals like the following:

1. Cut-off husband from his parents and other relatives.  Basically, he should subconsciously forget about his own parents and previous life and now start to think of wife and her parents as her own.
2. Over a course of time, due to such constant bickering and negative behaviour, the husband will either learn the C-word called Compromise and adjust to the new reality, or if he tries to keep contact with his parents, then other techniques will be used.  The most common one is that wife will find some excuse to go to her parents’ house and she won’t come back.

If parents and couple stay in same house

1. If parents of husband are living in same house, then favourite modus operandi of 498a sisterhood will be to create some issue where there was none about, specifically about the mother.  The usual demonization in Indian society of mother-in-law or saas also helps in all this process.  This is what I like to call the acclimatization phase.  In this phase, the husband and his parents are getting trained to accept the bahu/daughter-in-law with her warts and all, only they haven’t realized yet that it is going to be bahu with warts and warts only and nothing much else to look forward to
2. Creating some trouble or ruckus about husband’s parents, but not so much that they feel totally alienated.  They should feel harassed and uncomfortable staying in the same house, that’s the whole idea.
3. Refusal or creating problems doing any housework, even when she is a HOUSEWIFE!  Side note: “Hey, that’s insulting, we should call them homemakers”.  Sure we will try to call them that when they start creating rather than destroying homes!  And BTW, men who stay at home are also called househusbands.  So calling women housewives is all about equality!

If husband and wife stay independently of parents

Here the main problem for the feminist club is that they don’t have the usual enemy number 1 called in-laws to complain about.  And their main intention of the matriarch types always is not to alienate the husband immediately but train him over time to be like a pet dog and a loyal slave to the mistress.

1. Since it becomes difficult to create an issue about husband’s parents when they are not living there, they have to resort to innovative ways to create issues.  So it could be about some ceremony after marriage which has to be performed at either husband’s or wife’s house.  One common technique is to try to create an issue about some imaginary oversight or imagined insult being meted out to wife’s parents by husband’s parents.  Usually at such early state of marriage, the husband’s parents have no inkling about the nefarious intentions of their in-laws and they tend to acquiesce in how the situation proceeds in interest of keeping peace.  Also, lot of people have this idea that marriage is between the couple and if they are happy together, then they should not worry about the relatives and in-laws.  Boy that is wrong!  The game has already begun.
2. Another common technique is that if the mother of husband comes to stay with the couple for a few days, then create a huge issue out of nothing and complain to husband about his mother’s behaviour or what she said.  The idea is to tell both husband and his mother that if the two of them are not under the same roof, it will be better for everyone!  Usually the message is picked up rapidly by the mother/father of husband and they try not to visit them often.
3. Within first 3-6 months of marriage, create some incident where the parents of wife get a chance to complain to the husband’s parents about whatever issue has been created.
4. Basically, keep letting the husband know that the princess is NOT HAPPY YET!  Depending on the subtlety or coarseness of husband’s in-laws, they also pitch in from time to time and don’t have any problem calling him directly and telling him about the issues their daughter is facing.
5. Your in-laws will be almost encouraging their daughter to come back if she is having any issues.
6. The wife will be having regular communication with her mother over mobile phones. It won’t be of the harmless type like how to cook so and so dish, but more of the kind to share the results of today’s battle against husband.  Any coincidence that the false cases increased rapidly after year 2000 with rapid increase in both mobile communication and people’s incomes?

Phase 2: Usual rapprochement by husband and his family fail

Meaning of Rapprochement:

1. A re-establishing of cordial relations, as between two countries.

2. The state of reconciliation or of cordial relations.

In simple English, this is the Bring back your wife phase.  I especially like the fact that one of the definitions is also used for relations between countries.  Often time, that’s exactly how husband-wife relations are reduced to, as if negotiations between countries are going on!

This is the most interesting ‘phase’ for married men who are married into feminist/matriarchal families.  Since the marriage is new and possibly the man has at least some happy memories (check the honeymoon photos); even if wife has gone to mother’s (yes mother) place more than once, the husband and his parents/relatives keep hope that it is just teething troubles of a new marriage, and eventually things will sort out.  They probably have seen such situations maybe few decades back how a wife was “brought back” and it used to work out more often that not.  So especially the older generation takes it in a stride and is quite hopeful the daughter-in-law will eventually turn out to be a bahu-rani one day, and arrival of grand-kids are not too far either.

What really happens when the husband goes to wife’s place is one of the following things:

1. Sometimes he is not even allowed to call or communicate with the wife.  So basically he is treated like a beggar for trying to re-establish communication with his own wife!

2. The wife’s party put conditions on him, tells him what are the wrong things he has been doing, insult or disrespect him in other ways; and our man tolerates all that because the elders behind him have given him the confidence that these are the teething troubles and will sort out.

3. Sometimes conditions are put like: “your parents have to stay separately”.  “Take a rented house where you and wife can stay away from parents”.  Usually such demands are considered harmless by the elders and samaj and so our husband takes a separate house and tries to live a happy life from thereon at least.  Cho chweeeet…

4. At the very least, the husband is reminded that he has to keep his wife happy.  The subtle undertone always is that as of now the wife is not happy.  That is a fundamental and permanent feature/technique used by feminist/matriarchal husbands.  He has always be made to think that wife is not (fully) happy, and to remind him of that simple techniques of wife leaving for her parents’ house are used, and at the extreme wife attempts suicide but gets saved, because the real intention is to disturb the husband rather than actually commit suicide.  I will outline all these in a separate post on feminist/matriarchal families in India.  Oh, they are so predictable!

Wife comes back, what next!

This reminds me of dialogue from movie Sholay, even though it there was no husband-wife involved in that.

Gabbar Singh (talking to his men who came back defeated): “Tumne kya socha tha, sardar bahut khush hoga, shabashi dega!”

That my friends, is the situation husbands too face.  The dream of peaceful married life is not so easy to achieve, because just like Gabbar Singh in Sholay, the standards they (wife and her feminist brigade) want you to achieve to make them happy are almost impossible to achieve.  See the picture below and try to see if you can live up to that standard.  If yes, go ahead and live your ‘happily married’ life, and stop reading further.  Else read on…

Phase 3: Legal notice, Section 9/RCR by husbands

This is the phase which arrives, usually within first 1-2 years of marriage, when wife has left for her parental home one too many times.  Husband or his parents consult a lawyer, and the lawyer give the sage advice to send a legal notice to wife to come back, or even better, file a RCR (Restitution of Conjugal Rights) under Section 9 of Hindu Marriage Act.

Now that things are going into legal arena, let me introduce the heavily graphical/flow chart like depiction on the problems men face when things go legal in married life.  I made it few years back for another initiative which didn’t take off, but the diagram looks as valid today as it was then, so here it goes:

Some of above are strongly supported with lot of data (like when wife leaves house and her parents support her), while others (like Strong possibility of saving marriage) is supported by limited data and not from callers to MRAs but from wider society.

The above diagram still covers the case when husband party initiates legal notice or RCR/Section 9 notice.  They somehow think filing RCR will achieve one or more of the following:

1. Wife will come back

2. If wife doesn’t come back, we will at least save on maintenance if she files for it later.  No one who files RCR says it openly, but I don’t see any reason why they would file it if this was not one of the reasons lawyer suggested or they thought of themselves based on a light bulb going on.

3. We will be seen to have done the required process to get her back.  Which is right, but how does it matter really?  Your neighbours will not read the newspaper tomorrow which will publish the breaking news that you had filed RCR on your wife.  So their opinion of you is not going to change anyway.

4. Some other technical legal mumbo-jumbo which says that husband could get divorce if wife doesn’t join within 2 years of RCR decree.  I don’t know of one single case where husband got divorce based on this mumbo-jumbo, but people want to believe such things so it will go on.

If RCR/Section 9 is so useless, why do so many people do it?

That is a crore rupees question.  Really I mean.  Because by filing RCR you engage a lawyer, then when the wife files legal, even criminal cases on you (see diagram above again, it’s all there), and then you approach the same lawyer again seeking his advice, only this time lot less confident and more worried.  And the advocate says: “Don’t worry, we will file an objection”.  And that my friend is how the crores of rupees are earned by lawyers, it all starts from a humble RCR.  I don’t have a grudge against lawyers earning their livelihood, but for god’s sake let it be for something better than filing the RCR.

There is only one advantage of filing legal notice or RCR, and that is nothing to do with legal domain.  When there is heavy uncertainty in life, by filing RCR that uncertainty of “whether wife wants to come back or not” is replaced by more well-defined uncertainties like follows:

1. Wife has asked for Rs 100,000 maintenance per month, but my salary is only 50,000

2. IPC 498a is filed.  How to get anticipatory bail?  OR will I still get arrested now that CrPC 41 guidelines are being enforced?

3. Wife’s DV petition says: “He is impotent”.  It also says: “He sexually abused me”

That gentlemen and friends, is a sample of all that can happen when a simple legal notice was sent.  If it got you out of the uncertainty of whether wife will live with you or not, it did it’s job.   It certainly will do it’s job for your advocate

 

Phase 4: CAW cell, mediation, CrPC 125, DV, maybe even 498a or not just yet

Gentlemen and friends, in the beginning of every false case against husbands and their families, there is the familiar tactic used of pressurizing him to compromise, with twin techniques applied of fear of arrest/further cases, and ‘sincere advice’ of getting rid of bad marriage.  Here we attempt to discuss the dreaded C-word called Compromise.  It is a favourite word used by advocates, CAW cell, and judges too when we face false allegations of domestic violence, dowry harassment aka IPC 498a, IPC 406 aka keeping wife’s gifts/stridhan etc. etc.

Also read the Innocent until proven guilty is the law if you haven’t already since that sets the context for this post.  I have written another post about compromise during 498a cases, you can read that too.

Regarding police/CAW putting pressure to compromise: The sad reality is many people who face these issues ACTUALLY do compromise in terms of ‘settling’ the case by paying money and getting the coveted so called ‘mutual divorce’ and buying peace. As long as that keeps happening, police/CAW/advocates will keep pushing the new cases into the compromise pipeline.  Continue to full post about how to deal with the pressure of compromise put by CAW cell/police/lawyers/judges…

To be or not to be, to bring back wife or not; is the question

Even if the wife has filed a DV petition with standard template statements saying “I was not given food”, “I was locked in the bathroom”, our simple and gentle minded folks think that there is a chance to save the marriage.  Right!

Hope lives forever!  Or probably the simple reason is that for most Indians marriage is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so the alternatives of two or more marriages as in the West where people keep experimenting throughout life about finding the right person does not seem like such a bright idea!

 

How to find that good, honest, professional lawyer

When married men are facing a persistent martial issue, at some point they decide that it is time to take advice from a lawyer.

Note: If you don’t already have a legal case but are fearing one soon, read this post to find out your probability of getting a false case filed on you.

Many people are under the impression that an advocate is a professional just like a doctor, and they trust that they will get the same good advice as they get from a doctor.

Nothing could be more endangering to your future than believing in this doctor-lawyer stuff.  But people have actually told me this even after NOT getting good service from their advocate.  Continue to read at the full post below.

http://menrightsindia.net/2014/11/how-to-find-and-manage-your-lawyer-in-498a-dv-crpc-125-divorce-rcr-cases.html

 

Taking a stand, Dealing with CAW cell and so-called mediators

Situation: My wife filed a complaint in CAW cell, vanitha sahayvaani etc.; and now she is asking to come back.  I want to write some conditions for her to sign on paper before coming back.  What conditions should I write?

Attitude shift, not literal advice>>If I were you, I wouldn’t even go to this so called mediation in CAW cell or whatever else they call that drama.  Thereby I will also do my bit of contribution to the environment by using one less piece of paper.

I marked above sentence with words “attitude shift” so this is not meant as something one should literally do in these situations.  This was done based on advice of an MRA.  If I delete it completely, then this post could very well become another one of those do’s and don’ts to safeguard yourselves kinds of things.  The whole point I want to try to convey from time to time is: “Trying to safeguard yourselves from each small uncertainty in life could endanger your well-being even more”.

Otherwise the whole conversation with a new caller can usually go like this.  If I do that, what if she does that?  Then what do you suggest?  Then if I do that then it is possible they may do xyz, what do you suggest I should do in that case?  After 10-20 questions like this, the person is back to the original question from where he started!  They are trying to handle a life situation like learning how to prepare and pass an exam with objective type questions.  If you know the answers, just check the box and you will be done at the end of it!  No, it is not an objective type exam or a set of steps to take to safeguard yourselves.  You can approach supreme court lawyers and even they won’t be able to tell you anything more than the C-word (check it up, it’s already mentioned in post).  But you may have the satisfaction of having got good advice because many thousands were spent to get it.  Many people don’t appreciate or trust any advice they get for free.  They will definitely find someone who knows how to sell the same advice in an expensive package

What do I mean by taking a stand?  Taking a stand is NOT adopting a tactic, like some third (or even first) rate advocate says that you should always say in front of mediator that you are willing to take her back even if she has filed 498a on you.  That is not taking a stand, that is adopting a tactic; hoping that the System of which the advocates and mediators are a big part will have your interest in mind, ignoring the fact that they being human beings would try to maximize their own self-interest especially if the condition of your being ignorant of how the System works makes this job almost easy and without putting any pressure on their conscience.  Later on, you can roam around from one court to another trying to explain why you should be considered innocent when it is YOU who are willing to take her back even though SHE has filed criminal case on you.

Below picture shows what we DON’T mean by taking a stand.  If your taking a stand is of the nature below, well, then good luck.

Innocent until proven guilty

One of the simplest and best stands possible is defined as a simple principle of law itself, so it’s not even that we are inventing something complex here.  It’s called: Innocent until proven guilty.

Many of accused men (and families) under IPC 498a/406/376/DV Act seem to think that the principle of innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to them!  What else is the reason that they try so hard to prove innocence to police, CAW, or even own advocates when facing false allegations by the wife and gang?  Why can’t we just keep quiet and let the law take it’s own course?  Read the full post on Innocent until proven guilty at link below.

http://menrightsindia.net/2014/10/innocent-until-proven-guilty-is-the-law-use-it.html

The joys of feminism, and the law of broken marriages

100% of the callers to MRAs have the type of in-laws where the mother is the dominant person in the household.  In other words, it is a feminist-ruled or matriarch ruled family.  I said 100%, not 99.9%.  Well actually once or twice I have seen somewhat different situations but they are extremely rare and don’t fall in the realm of men’s rights violations but more into unfortunate situations of life.  So when it comes to men’s rights violations, it can be safely said that 100% of calls are from men who married into a feminist family.  How’s that about understanding your environment.

By now, it should be clear that I am not a fan of feminism.  Let me go further.  I believe that patriarchy is the right model for family and social organisation at least at this stage of human evolution.  That’s taking a stand.  I am willing to defend my stand, debate on national TV if need be, or write articles on it.

The law of broken marriages

A marriage in India will break once the woman/wife/ her parents have so much as threatened to file a case, or mentioned the word police, or indulged in unusually insulting behaviour towards husband’s parents (insulting husband is anyway routine for them).  The marriage will also eventually break if the wife has indulged in behaviour like walking out of husband’s house without rhyme or reason several times.

There are many signals and warnings given by the feminist/matriarchal families and many a time even before marriage, but we fail to notice them as warnings since we are more focused on how to make things work, rather than how to destroy them.  Understanding and decoding the feminist/matriarchal families has been done, but I have yet to write it down.  In the meantime, read this post which gives the clear behaviours and warnings exhibited by such wives and their families and whether you can face a false case.

 

How I got freedom by depositing money in court

To be written…

In the meantime enjoy one more of diagrams below about mistakes done by men in their legal approaches:

498a compromise: bring back 498a wife

Don’t even attempt it in your dreams.  If you do, then at least have some self-respect and deal with it yourselves whatever happens later, and don’t waste time of MRAs by calling them to save or ‘help’ you.

498a compromise: settle financially, ‘move on’, get ‘mutual’ divorce

Ah… that’s the favourite part of every 498a case for the DV/498a industry, and a dream come true for the sisterhood of 498a wives’ club.  I already have a full post on it, read it here.  No, it doesn’t give any ‘advice’ whether you should or should not do a financial settlement.  That’s up to you, and that’s what I mean by taking a stand.  Some men know how to take a stand, some don’t.  Many of the compromiser types face the same problems in their 2nd marriage, only much worse, and when they call me my first question to them is, “Being a veteran of two marriages, shouldn’t you be the one advising others rather than asking for advice”   But I have already decided I will stop taking calls from such two marriage waalas.  They can approach their nearest weekly meeting, at least a little padyatra will do some good to them.

Handling maintenance cases under CrPC 125, DV Act, HMA 24

To handle maintenance cases under CrPC 125, DV Act, or even HMA 24 is one of the major headaches faced by husbands.  Nothing raises the anger and frustration levels up in men as much as coming to the realization that not only the husband has to deal with an uncooperative, abusive, cruel wife and her machinations, but as per law, she can ask for her maintenance while the cases are going on in court!

Many of these wives rarely file for divorce in the beginning at least.  They don’t need to actually.  “Why reduce the chance of a fat alimony by looking like the one who has filed for divorce?”  Instead start to file cases one by one: CrPC 125, 498A, or DV Act.  Or make it a slow torture for husband by filing multiple maintenance cases like CrPC 125, then DV Act.  I even know of one husband who is paying maintenance under 3 different sections: CrPC 125, DV Act, HMA 24.  One must ask what are the ‘learned’ lawyers of husbands doing if they allow maintenance amount to be awarded in 3 different cases?  It is because of getting trapped in high interim maintenance, and running around courts for many years, that many husbands ultimately give up and go for one time ‘settlement’ with mutual divorce, which is the preferred way of the divorce industry of ending matrimonial litigation.  The interests of divorce industry are inimical to interests of husbands, and aligned with interests of wives.

There are many posts on this site about how to fight maintenance cases, useful judgments about denying maintenance, and so on.  For the purpose of educating men (yes, it’s like an education) on how to deny or reduce maintenance, I have recently published a book on the topic which is available as a eBook readable on all computers and mobile devices.  I hope it will be of some use to men who have to face maintenance and other cases.  Click below to know more.

The joy of not filing divorce

Many men ask the question that now that they have realized that they have been trapped by wife and in-laws into a sham marriage the whole purpose of which was to extort money and property from husband, isn’t it better to file for divorce and get rid of the problem once and for all?

Very true.  But there are no real pearls of wisdom in above question.  Of course, given a choice, everyone wants to move away from unpleasant or cruel situations in life.  The whole question is how to do it without giving up Rs 50 lakh in ‘settlement’, or a property worth 1.5 crore to wife.  If it was a case that a marriage slowly degenerated into loveless and lifeless affair over a period of 5, maybe 10 years, and both husband and wife made a conscious decision to separate, that would be a situation where the above question can be asked more appropriately.

The real answer men trapped by feminist/matriarchal women and in-laws want to know is: How to get the divorce without paying a penny?

They don’t want to pay a penny because they don’t believe they are at fault, and mostly it’s true for the cases we hear.  In fact, it’s an ‘engineered’ game by wife and in-laws to make husband so frustrated that he agrees to pay up and get his freedom.  So there is nothing morally wrong with above question either.

Anyone who ‘cracks’ an answer to above question can become a crorepati in very short time.  Unfortunately for them, on the other side, there are divorce industry lawyers who are busy putting fresh cases by wives daily on the conveyor belt of CAW Cell, DV, CrPC 125, 498A/406 etc.  The conveyor belt takes the raw materials, processes them, and at the end of anywhere from few months to few years, produces the end results of production: divorce, fat settlement for wife, impoverished (hopefully free at last) husband, sole custody of children with woman etc.   They are asking the question daily: How to get my client a fat settlement using the women protection laws?

So there is no real solution to get freedom in short time, without paying much.  The fastest cases I have seen for husbands who didn’t pay took 2-3 years or so at least.  But their situations and techniques may not work for everyone, because they gave a good fight to wife/in-laws, whereas most want to get rid of things without fighting much.

Why most husbands should not to file for divorce?

For the following reasons:

1. Most men who are filing for divorce didn’t collect any real evidence of cruelty.  Many had the opportunity but still they didn’t consider it necessary at the time.  They will basically get processed within the court system from anywhere from 3-6 years, and at the end the court may say that there is “no evidence of cruelty”.

2. Men are unprepared for handling the cases filed by wife.  Either their lawyers don’t inform them of cases the wife can file, or they many ignore it taking it lightly.

3. After filing divorce, if the end result is same that one paid lot of money to get the divorce, then how did the divorce petition help?  It only resulted in one more case, running around courts with hopes, more legal fees, and so on.  Instead if the husband had tried to fight the maintenance cases well and reduced maintenance paid to wife, she would have realized after few years the futility of her false cases, and agreed to a low or zero settlement divorce.

4. Some men have read on internet about some judgments that court ordered a divorce to a husband based on a false 498A by wife.  They immediately latch on to the idea, and file divorce after wife’s 498A, hoping those judgments will give them their divorce.  I have already explained in my posts on this site about various such judgments, that most 498A acquittal judgments DO NOT mention it to be a false case.  The court order only mentions the reason of acquittal to be lack of evidence.  That piece of paper will not get anyone divorce anywhere.  So again, filing divorce case merely because of 498A is only adding to enrichment of divorce lawyers.  If one gets a judgment in 498A of it being false and malicious case, then of course one can file divorce based on that.  That happens rarely because the white knights will lose their mojo, and divorce industry will lose it’s bread and butter, if 498A judgments mentioned them to be false and malicious cases routinely.

What if you still want to file divorce?

You can read another post of mine on why Indian men should be very careful before filing divorce.  If that has not dissuaded you, maybe the best course of action would be to do some study of your own in understanding the process of divorce, key judgments, strength/weakness of your evidence/case etc.  The only reason an Indian husband should file divorce is if he is convinced that handling multiple cases like his own filed divorce case, maintenance (HMA 24) filed by wife; and most likely other cases like DV Act, IPC 498a/406 filed by wife — will be much better than living in uncertainty and torture of wife.

To tackle such issues and reduce time and effort of MRAs getting diverted into these issues, I have written the book on topic of divorce for men.  It contains more than 70 judgments on topics of divorce due to cruelty, desertion, adultery, false cases by wife, wife’s adultery, annulment etc.  The best way to approach this book is as a self-study guide (so basically I can wash my hands off 🙂 ).  Read the judgments (including my summary, and commentary), and make own conclusions about strength/weakness of your evidence, case (if already filed), and what to expect down the line.  It is available as an online eBook below (Note: available in digital Kindle format only, not as printed book, not as PDF file):

To know how to purchase and read on Kindle, go to end of this post and read.

Child custody and visitation

Even though most men who contact MRAs don’t have children, my consistent experience is that even those who are fathers think of child as part of the package called wife and child(ren), and when the wife goes they believe the child also goes with her!  The root cause is not really lack of love for their children, but a curious offshoot of the overall phenomenon of gynocentric masculinity which I will write about sometime too.  With that core belief and mindset, giving any kind of advice about child custody or visitation is futile.  For those who don’t fall into that category, below diagrams can be of some help.  The advice below will go against all conventional advice by society, by advocates etc, but they are your children before anything else, so you be the judge.