Best Mutual Consent Divorce Lawyers in Delhi — Verified Advocates

The procedure is two court appearances built on one negotiation. The spouses must have lived separately for at least one year and agree that the marriage should end; the first motion records the settlement — permanent alimony, child custody and visitation, return of stridhan, division of joint assets and closure of pending cases — and the second motion, made after the statutory interregnum, results in the decree. The six-month cooling-off period between motions is no longer mandatory: after the Supreme Court's ruling in Amardeep Singh v. Harveen Kaur (2017), Delhi Family Courts regularly waive it where the separation is long and reconciliation is genuinely dead, which can compress the whole process to under two months.

Delhi's Family Courts sit at the district complexes — Dwarka, Saket, Tis Hazari, Karkardooma, Rohini and Patiala House — and the petition is filed where the marriage was solemnised, where the couple last resided together, or where the wife currently resides. Couples married under the Special Marriage Act use the parallel Section 28 route with the same two-motion structure. For NRI spouses, Delhi Family Courts routinely permit appearance through video-conference for one or both motions, so a spouse working abroad does not have to fly in twice; what they cannot do is skip consent — both parties must confirm it to the judge at both stages.

The settlement deed is where a mutual consent divorce is actually won or lost. A properly drafted deed makes the one-time alimony genuinely final, sequences payment against the motions (typically part at first motion, balance at second), fixes custody and visitation with enough detail to prevent future litigation, and provides for withdrawal or quashing of pending 498A, DV Act or maintenance proceedings — with the quashing of criminal cases taken to the Delhi High Court on the strength of the settlement. Consent can be withdrawn any time before the decree, which is precisely why the deed's structure and payment sequencing matter more than its length.