Documents required for a mutual consent divorce
Most mutual consent petitions are delayed by paperwork, not by law. The list below is what a family court in India expects with a petition under section 13B of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and what to do about the two items people usually cannot produce.
If you are earlier than this, start with mutual consent divorce, step by step.
The core set
Proof of the marriage. The marriage certificate if the marriage was registered. If it was not, that is not a problem — registration is proof of marriage, not a condition of divorce. See below.
Identity and address proof for both of you. Current addresses, because jurisdiction depends on where you live and where you last lived together.
Photographs of the marriage. Wedding photographs, and often the invitation card. They do more work than people expect where the marriage was never registered.
Proof that you have lived separately for a year or more. This is the one that decides whether the petition is accepted, and it is covered in its own section below.
Income documents for both of you. Salary slips, income tax returns, bank statements. A court reading a settlement wants to see that the maintenance figure in it makes sense against what you each earn.
Details of what you own. The flat and whose name it is in, the loan and who is paying it, jewellery, vehicles, accounts, investments, anything with a name on it.
Details of any children. Ages, where they go to school, who they live with now, and what the two of you have agreed about custody, access and support.
The settlement, in writing. The single most important document in the file. See the settlement agreement.
Affidavits from each of you, sworn separately, stating the facts the petition relies on and that the consent is free.
A vakalatnama for each of you, authorising the advocate to appear.
If the marriage was never registered
You can still file. Registration is evidence of a marriage, not a precondition to dissolving one, and Indian courts routinely dissolve unregistered marriages.
What takes its place is ordinary proof that the marriage happened and was solemnised according to the rites that applied to you:
- Wedding photographs and video
- The invitation card
- A certificate from the temple, gurudwara, church or the person who solemnised it
- Affidavits from family members who attended
- Documents where you are already recorded as married — a joint account, a nominee form, an insurance policy, a passport, a rent agreement
Courts generally do not need all of that. A coherent set that fixes the date and the fact is enough.
Proving the year apart
Section 13B(1) requires that you have lived separately for a year or more. A statement in the petition is the assertion; what carries it is anything dated.
- Separate rent agreements, or a rent agreement in one name from a date
- Utility bills or municipal records at two addresses
- Bank or card statements showing separate addresses
- Employer records, a transfer letter, a posting order
- School records showing one parent's address
- Anything official with an address and a date on it
Living separately does not have to mean living in different houses. Courts have accepted that a couple sharing an address but not living as husband and wife are living separately for this purpose. That is a harder case to prove and it is worth saying so plainly rather than discovering it at the hearing — it is proved by conduct and by testimony, not by a document, and it is exactly the kind of thing a judge will ask about.
What people forget
Anything running between you. A complaint, an application, a notice, a proceeding under any provision. It has to be disclosed, and the settlement has to say what happens to it. A petition that is silent about a pending matter is the petition that gets adjourned.
Both sets of documents. A mutual consent petition is joint. Papers for one of you is half a file.
Legible copies. Family court filing counters reject unreadable scans, and that costs you a listing date.
One thing that does not belong in the file
Do not put account numbers, card details or passwords into a settlement or an affidavit where a description will do. "The housing loan with the lender named below, in the petitioner's sole name" identifies the loan. Court records are not private in the way people assume.
What to do next
Bring what you have. Nothing on this list is a precondition to a first conversation, and half of it is usually assembled during the drafting rather than before it.
A guided session is fifty minutes online, and the papers are drafted afterwards for the court that will actually hear you.