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Kerala in a recent judgment held that the remarriage of a widow after the death of her husband in a road traffic accident under Section 166of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 shall not be a decisive factor. Justice N Nagesh observed that dependency consequent to the death of their husband does not end just because she has remarried or because she is self-reliant.
The prime issue in the case was whether the widow’s entitlement t compensation after the death of her husband will diminish due to her remarriage while the case remained pending before the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal Under the Section 166 of the Act? The widow and her parents of the deceased filed an appeal in the High Court. The provision of Section 166 allows both a divorced wife or a widow can maintain such a petition.
The Court observed that consideration remarriage would have been due to the untimely death of the husband and not as a result of divorce. The Judge reasoned that psychological obstacles that a widow has to face during the unwarranted course of a remarriage. The orthodox concept of a widow leaving the husband’s family and relatives after his death or after her remarriage is becoming a story of the past. The remarriage or self-reliance of a widow but the loss of dependency does not cease. The word dependency and legal representative therefore should receive a pragmatic interpretation was what the court opined.
The Court further added that “In the present-day society, no one wants or expects a young widow to lace herself in white attire or wear widow's weeds and mourn her entire life. The society has evolved. In spite of remarriage, a widow may keep her relations and discharge her duties towards her former in-laws even after remarriage. Such matters cannot be speculated. Those are all imponderables. Courts will not normally entertain actuarial evidence on such imponderables.”
In Trichy v. Nelphona and Ors [CDJ 2012 MHC 3706], the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court observed that social change is inevitable that has to be met with either legislation or judicial interpretation to indicate the acceptance of a better mode of life.
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