Bombay High Court: decades of cohabitation as husband and wife presumes a valid marriage

In a partition suit filed in 1976, Banubai claimed to be the legally wedded second wife of Baburao Saste, who died in 1953, and sought a share of the family's joint property on behalf of herself and her sons. Baburao's brother Narayan disputed that any valid marriage had ever taken place. The trial court in 1983 disbelieved the marriage and dismissed the suit, but the first appellate court reversed that finding in 1999 and decreed partition; Narayan's heirs carried the matter to the High Court in second appeal.

Dismissing the appeal on 13 October 2026, Justice Sandeep V. Marne applied the settled rule that long and continuous cohabitation as husband and wife raises a strong presumption of a valid marriage under Section 114 of the Evidence Act, placing a heavy burden on whoever disputes it, following the Supreme Court's decisions in Badri Prasad v. Director of Consolidation and Kattukandi Edathil Krishnan v. Kattukandi Edathil Valsan. The Court also held that once Banubai's marriage and her sons' legitimacy stood proved, the brother's rival claim to have become sole owner 'by survivorship' became academic, and that a coparcener's Will leaving his share to his own coparceners, rather than to an outsider, does not offend the rule against a coparcener alienating undivided joint-family property by Will. The 53-year-old dispute accordingly ended in the original plaintiffs' favour.