Wife Took ₹20 Lakh, Refused Divorce: Delhi HC Holds Her Guilty of Contempt [2026]

She took the money, then changed her mind — but the Delhi High Court wasn’t willing to let a signed settlement become a one-way street. In Manpreet Singh v. Harleen Kaur Khurana, the Court drew a sharp line between a spouse’s statutory right to withdraw consent for divorce and the legal consequences of walking away from a court-recorded undertaking after pocketing the settlement money. Can a person accept ₹20 lakh under a court-recorded divorce settlement, change their mind about the divorce, file fresh litigation against the same spouse, and still keep the money? The Delhi High Court’s answer, delivered on 14 October 2026, was an unambiguous no and it came with a six-week deadline to pay every rupee back. Title: Wife Takes ₹20 Lakh, Then Backs Out: Delhi High Court Holds Her Guilty of Contempt and Orders Full Refund Case Name: Manpreet Singh v. Harleen Kaur Khurana Case Number: CONT.CAS(C) 752/2022 Court: Delhi High Court Judges: Justice Neena Bansal Krishna Judgment Date: 14 October 2026 Citation: CONT.CAS(C) 752/2022, Delhi High Court (CNR: DLHC010274632022) ABSTRACT This case analysis examines a recent Delhi High Court ruling in which a wife was held guilty of civil contempt under the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 for wilfully reneging on a court-recorded mutual consent divorce settlement, despite having already received ₹20 lakh from her husband toward that settlement. The dispute arose out of a Hindu Marriage Act proceeding where the parties had agreed, across two separate settlement rounds in 2020 and 2022, to a staged payment structure tied to the first and second motions for divorce by mutual consent. After banking the first installment, the wife declined to proceed with the second motion, pursued maintenance, domestic violence and criminal proceedings against her husband, and offered no credible explanation for resiling from her undertaking. Justice Neena Bansal Krishna distinguished the well-settled principle that consent to a mutual divorce may be withdrawn at any point before the decree is passed from the separate question of what happens when that withdrawal follows a wilful breach of a settlement already recorded before a court. The Court directed a full refund of ₹20 lakh within six weeks, declining to add interest. This piece unpacks the facts, the statutory framework, the Court’s reasoning, and what the ruling means for anyone navigating a mutual consent divorce settlement in India. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Background and Facts of the Case Legal Issues Before the Court Statutory Framework and Relevant Sections Arguments Advanced by the Parties Case Laws Relied Upon Court’s Reasoning and Observations Final Judgment and Directions Critical Analysis Conclusion and Key Takeaways 1. INTRODUCTION Mutual consent divorce under Section 13B of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 is often described as the “amicable” route out of a failed marriage, built on the premise that both spouses genuinely wish to part ways and have resolved their financial and custodial disputes beforehand. That premise, however, depends entirely on good faith. What happens when one spouse accepts the financial benefit of a settlement and then simply refuses to see the process through? The Delhi High Court’s ruling in Manpreet Singh v. Harleen Kaur Khurana answers that question with unusual clarity, holding that while the right to withdraw consent to divorce is statutorily protected, that right cannot be used as a shield to retain money received under a settlement that the withdrawing spouse has no intention of honouring. 2. BACKGROUND AND FACTS OF THE CASE The parties entered into a mutual divorce settlement on 1 September 2020, under which the husband agreed to pay a total of ₹40 lakh in two tranches — ₹20 lakh at the first motion and the remaining ₹20 lakh at the second motion. The Dwarka Family Court allowed the first motion on 22 September 2020, and the wife duly received her first ₹20 lakh. The second motion petition was filed on 29 October 2020, but the relationship between the parties deteriorated before it could be taken to its conclusion. The husband subsequently moved an application under Section 26 of the Hindu Marriage Act seeking modifications to the custody arrangement for the couple’s child. In response, and in what the husband characterised as a departure from the settlement’s spirit, the wife initiated a maintenance petition, a domestic violence complaint, and a criminal case that led to an FIR under Sections 406, 498A and 34 of the Indian Penal Code. The parties attempted to course-correct through court-facilitated counselling, arriving at a revised settlement on 10 May 2022 that preserved the child’s residence with the mother while granting the father defined visitation rights and reaffirmed the husband’s financial obligations toward the child. Even so, the wife did not complete the second motion for divorce, nor did she withdraw her domestic violence complaint as she had agreed to. It was this continued non-compliance that drove the husband to the Delhi High Court. 3. LEGAL ISSUES BEFORE THE COURT The central question before Justice Neena Bansal Krishna was whether the wife’s refusal to proceed with the second motion amounted to a lawful exercise of her right to withdraw consent, or whether it constituted a wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court — and therefore civil contempt. A closely connected issue was whether the husband’s own conduct, particularly his custody application, had itself breached the settlement and thereby disentitled him from seeking contempt relief against his wife. The Court also had to determine the appropriate remedy once contempt was established: whether a refund was warranted, and if so, whether it should carry interest as the husband had demanded. 4. STATUTORY FRAMEWORK AND RELEVANT SECTIONS Several statutory provisions anchored the Court’s analysis. Section 2(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 defines civil contempt to include wilful disobedience of a court order as well as wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court — the provision at the very heart of this dispute. Sections 10 and 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 empower a High Court to punish contempt of a subordinate court and prescribe the punishment for such contempt, and it was under these two sections that the husband brought his petition. On the matrimonial side, Section 13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 governs the second motion that must follow the mandatory cooling-off period after the first motion in a mutual consent divorce, while Section 26 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 deals with orders relating to the custody, maintenance and education of minor children, and formed the basis of the husband’s custody application that the wife pointed to as a counter-breach. The wife’s domestic violence complaint invoked Section 12 of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 , while the criminal proceedings she initiated rested on Sections 406, 498A and 34 of the Indian Penal Code , covering criminal breach of trust, cruelty by a husband or his relatives, and acts done in furtherance of common intention respectively. 5. ARGUMENTS ADVANCED BY THE PARTIES The husband’s case rested on a straightforward proposition: the wife had accepted ₹20 lakh under a settlement she had voluntarily signed and that had been recorded by the Family Court, and her subsequent refusal to see the divorce through — without offering any explanation — amounted to a wilful breach of that undertaking. He sought both a contempt finding and a refund of the ₹20 lakh with 2% monthly interest. The wife, in response, leaned heavily on the well-established principle that consent in a mutual divorce must survive until the moment the decree is actually passed, arguing that she could not be compelled to proceed merely because she had earlier agreed to. She also contended that the husband had himself violated the settlement by filing the custody application, and on that basis argued that the ₹20 lakh she had received should be treated as forfeited rather than refundable. 6. CASE LAWS RELIED UPON The Court’s reasoning drew on two precedents in particular. It referred to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sureshta Devi v. Om Prakash , (1991) 2 SCC 25, which had settled that neither spouse in a mutual consent divorce can be compelled to give consent, and that such consent must continue right up to the passing of the final decree — a principle the Delhi High Court accepted as correct in the abstract but treated as distinct from the question of contempt. The Court also leaned on its own earlier decision in Avneesh Sood v. Tithi Sood , a Delhi High Court ruling that had cautioned against allowing a party to treat a settlement casually and disrespect the sanctity of a court-recorded undertaking. Together, these precedents allowed the Court to draw the line that ultimately decided the case: the statutory freedom to withdraw consent is real, but it does not erase the consequences that follow from walking away from a financial undertaking already acted upon. 7. COURT’S REASONING AND OBSERVATIONS Justice Neena Bansal Krishna’s reasoning proceeded in careful stages. First, the Court examined whether the husband’s custody application under Section 26 amounted to a breach on his part, and found that it did not — noting that the application had been filed only after the second motion petition was already before the court, and that the husband had otherwise honoured his obligations under the revised settlement, including monthly payments toward the child and bearing the child’s schooling costs in full. Second, the Court weighed the fact that the wife’s own maintenance proceedings had resulted in an award running from 2021, layered on top of the ₹20 lakh she had already received under the divorce settlement — a detail that fed into the Court’s assessment of her conduct as a whole. Most tellingly, when asked directly during the hearing whether she wished to reconcile with her husband or proceed with the divorce, the wife answered no to both. The Court read this as decisive: a person who neither wants the marriage to continue nor is willing to let it end, while retaining a substantial settlement payment, cannot credibly claim that her withdrawal was a good-faith exercise of a statutory right. The Court found no satisfactory explanation on record for her conduct and concluded that she had wilfully resiled from her settlement obligations. 8. FINAL JUDGMENT AND DIRECTIONS The Delhi High Court held the wife guilty of civil contempt for wilfully breaching the undertaking recorded before the court, and directed her to refund the entire ₹20 lakh to her husband within six weeks to purge the contempt. Notably, the Court declined the husband’s request for 2% monthly interest on the amount, limiting the relief strictly to the principal sum. The ruling thereby balanced accountability for breach of a court undertaking against a more conservative approach to the quantum of the remedy itself. 9. CRITICAL ANALYSIS What makes this ruling significant is the precision with which it separates two ideas that are often conflated in matrimonial litigation: the right to withdraw consent, and immunity from the consequences of breaking a financial undertaking. The Court did not penalise the wife for withdrawing her consent as such — that would have run contrary to settled Supreme Court law. Instead, it penalised the retention of settlement money in circumstances where the withdrawal was unexplained, followed a pattern of litigation inconsistent with the spirit of the settlement, and left the husband having fully performed his side of the bargain. This distinction matters enormously for drafting practice: settlement agreements tied to staged mutual consent divorce payments should, going forward, build in explicit refund and contingency clauses, precisely because courts are now willing to enforce the financial logic of such settlements even where the underlying consent to divorce itself cannot be compelled. The ruling also signals that courts are increasingly alert to settlements being used as a one-sided extraction tool, where one party enjoys the financial benefit of an agreement while using unrelated proceedings, such as maintenance or domestic violence complaints, to avoid completing their own obligations. 10. CONCLUSION AND KEY TAKEAWAYS Manpreet Singh v. Harleen Kaur Khurana is a reminder that a court-recorded settlement in matrimonial litigation is not a one-way ticket. A spouse remains free, under Sureshta Devi , to withdraw consent to a mutual divorce at any point before the decree, but that freedom does not extend to keeping settlement money received on the strength of an undertaking that is subsequently and unjustifiably abandoned. For practitioners and litigants alike, the case underscores the importance of building enforceable contingencies into staged settlement payments, and signals that Delhi High Court will not hesitate to use its contempt jurisdiction to prevent a settlement from being treated as a one-sided windfall.