Sibling divorce could wreck your marriage

Hyderabad, April 29: Young couples of the city are nowadays seeking divorces for the silliest of reasons.

Advocates of the Family Court were puzzled when a couple filed a divorce petition saying they could no longer stay together since their siblings had got divorced.
“The couple who approached me had no differences to speak of,” said Mrs S. Aseervadamma, a senior advocate at the Family Court in Hyderabad. “Their sole reason was that the wife’s brother and the husband’s sister had broken up. This was their excuse for filing a divorce petition.” Advocates rule that the couples in such cases fail to realise that it is their siblings’ marriage which has gone sour and that there was no need for them to wreck their own marriage too. “It is a mental state where the husband and wife resort to bickering and finally end up looking for a divorce,’’ said Mrs. Aseervadamma. In quite a few cases, the husband or wife are so upset by the separation of their siblings that they start blaming their partner for the whole episode.
“The biggest dilemma in such cases is that there is no valid reason why the second couple wants to opt for a divorce,” said Mr Chandrashekhar Reddy, senior advocate of the Family Court in Secunderabad.
“It can be termed an impact of the first divorce between family members. Quite a lot of couples have broken off because their siblings and relatives have got separated, he said.”
In some instances, the partners are mature enough to realise that their siblings’ divorce is no reason for them to separate. “But family members pressure them too to adopt the same line,” said Mr Reddy. “There is a feeling of animosity and hatred created among family members,” said Mrs P. Vishwajanani, senior advocate of the Family Court in Secunderabad. “Add to that the fact that we have nuclear families these days. The entire family gets affected if one marriage fails to succeed.”