A child’s wish to bear the name of the man who lives with and cares for her became a decisive factor in an unusual intervention by the Supreme Court.
The court rewrote the terms of their earlier settlement, considering it in the best interests of their child with special needs, including permitting her to take the name of her stepfather, follow the religion of her present household, allowing her mother to alter her school and identity records and give the mother her exclusive custody.
The original settlement provided for joint custody and visitation rights to the father. But following the parents’ remarriages and the circumstances that emerged during the court’s interaction with the child, the bench concluded that continuing those arrangements would not serve her well-being. Because the court did not merely settle the immediate dispute between the divorced parents but it also altered the framework governing the child’s custody, identity and upbringing that the parents had agreed to at the time of their divorce, the order is notable.
It also recorded an undertaking by the mother that the child would be brought up according to the father’s religion — Islam, as the parents belonged to different communities.
The court noted that the child had developed a close affinity to her stepfather and had questioned her mother about why she could not have the name of the father who lived with her and looked after her, as was the case with her friends. The court therefore brought the legal proceedings between the divorced couple to an end.
The bench consequently gave the mother exclusive custody and permitted her to make suitable changes in the child’s school and other records relating to her citizenship and identity “so as to align the child with the circumstances in which she is brought up”. The bench said it was “persuaded by the entreaties made by the mother” and the peculiar circumstances of the case.
The court also took note of the mother’s plea that the earlier undertaking regarding the child’s religion had become difficult to sustain after the marriage had ended and that forcing the child to follow a different religion in the mother’s household would not be in her best interest. In effect, the court preserved the parties’ decision to end their marriage but substantially recast the consequences of that settlement insofar as they affected the child, giving the mother exclusive custody and authority over the child’s identity and upbringing, while removing the visitation arrangement and the earlier commitments on her religious upbringing.
