You’ve been with your partner for over a decade. You’ve built a home together, split the rent, argued over whose turn it is to do the dishes — all the ordinary texture of a life shared. You’re not married. Maybe you’re planning to be, someday.
Then, one day, your own family decides they’ve had enough. And the disapproval turns into something uglier: threats.
Where do you even go with that?
A couple in Delhi, together since 2014, found out this August. The woman’s father and brother had made their disapproval clear, and it had tipped into threats of violence.
So they did the obvious thing — walked into their local police station on 6 August and filed a complaint.
And then, nothing happened. No follow-up. No action. Just silence.
So they did something most people in their situation don’t even realise they’re allowed to do. They went to the Delhi High Court.
On 13 August, Justice Saurabh Banerjee gave them an answer, and it wasn’t a cautious one. Consenting adults, he said, have an unfettered right to choose a partner and live with them. Full stop. Not her father, not her brother, nobody else gets a say.
He ordered the police at Vijay Vihar station to protect the couple whenever they needed it — and to keep doing so wherever they moved next.
Adults in live-in relationships can seek police protection when they face threats from family members. Photograph: (AI-Generated image)
“If you’re in this situation yourself, or worried you might end up in one, that ruling matters to you directly. It’s applicable to most people who find themselves in a similar situation,” says Lalitha Sudakaran, a Chennai-based family law practitioner.
So let’s actually walk through this together: what you’re protected against, where that protection can wobble, and — this is the part that matters most — what to do if you ever need to use it.
You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your relationship
Start here, because it’s the thing families get wrong most often: your parents, relatives, or friends have no legal say in who you choose to live with. That’s not just a nice sentiment. It’s written into the Constitution.
“Article 19 and Article 21 guarantee you, as a consenting adult, freedom of choice and the right to life and liberty, and neither clause carves out an exception for unmarried couples,” Lalitha explains.
Two Supreme Court cases back this up, if you ever need to point to something concrete. In Nandakumar v State of Kerala, the Court said adults can live together whether they ever marry or not.
Then in 2018, in the Hadiya case — Shafin Jahan v Asokan K M — it went a step further, saying that policing someone’s personal choices in the name of “social morality” doesn’t just overreach. It strips them of their own identity.
Article 19 and Article 21 protect an adult’s freedom to choose a partner and their right to life and personal liberty. Photograph: (Homegrown)
And yes, you can ask for police protection even without a marriage certificate in hand. As Chennai-based Senior Advocate Karthikeyan Subaraj puts it: “Living together is part of your right to life itself, under Article 21, and courts have leaned on that reasoning again and again while deciding protection and maintenance cases for people in your position.”
What if the danger isn’t coming from your family but from the relationship?
“You’re covered here too, more than you might expect. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 never asks whether you’re married. It covers any “relationship in the nature of marriage,” which means you can seek a protection order, the right to stay in your shared home, and compensation for abuse — physical, emotional, or financial — on the same footing as a wife would have,” Karthikeyan explains.
There’s a bar you need to clear for this to apply, though. The Supreme Court has said you both need to be adults who are free to marry, that you need to have lived together for a genuine stretch of time, not on a whim, and that you need to have presented yourselves to the world as a couple.
Courts have also said shared finances and running a household together count in your favour — but a casual or brief relationship won’t qualify, and neither will one where you didn’t know your partner was already married elsewhere.
Breakups happen, of course. If yours does, and the relationship was long-term and functioned like a marriage, you can claim maintenance. The law that used to be Section 125 of the CrPC — now folded into the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita — has been read by courts to cover exactly this.
And a 2019 ruling went further still, saying you could claim broader remedies under the Domestic Violence Act than maintenance law alone offers. As Delhi-based lawyer Manoj Kataria puts it: “The law doesn’t reward a ceremony. It recognises a relationship that functioned like one.”
If you have kids together, here’s some good news — they’re not left in limbo, which surprises a lot of people.
The Supreme Court has held that policing someone’s personal choices in the name of “social morality” doesn’t just overreach. It strips them of their own identity. Photograph: (Bhaskar English)
“Courts have repeatedly said children born into live-in relationships are legitimate, with the same right to inherit their parents’ self-acquired property as any other child. The one exception is ancestral property. This same principle also guides how custody and guardianship get decided,” Lalitha says.
And just to put this to rest — no, none of this is illegal, no matter what anyone around you implies. Back in 2010, the Supreme Court shut down the idea that living together outside marriage is a crime or a moral failing. And in 2022, Kerala’s High Court took it further, ruling that consenting adults can choose to live together regardless of gender — extending the same protection to same-sex couples.
Here’s where it gets shakier
None of what you just read lives in one single law. It’s been pieced together, ruling by ruling, over 15 years. Which means, in practice, how well you’re protected can depend a lot on which judge you happen to draw.
In 2021, for instance, a Punjab and Haryana High Court bench refused a threatened live-in couple protection, saying it would “disturb the social fabric.” Put that next to the Delhi order from this August, and you’ve got two courts, five years apart, landing on almost opposite conclusions from the same basic question.
Kataria doesn’t sugarcoat why: “Outcomes in these cases often track a judge’s personal sense of morality more closely than they track what the Supreme Court has actually laid down.” The same facts, he says, can get you protected in one courtroom and turned away in another. Subaraj agrees — courts have leaned on the right reasoning again and again, but “again and again doesn’t mean consistently.”
Advocate Shantanu Tewari points to a bigger gap behind all this: there’s still no dedicated government mechanism you can walk into if you’re threatened. That’s a big part of why so many people end up filing writ petitions in constitutional courts — for something that really should just be a routine police response.
A few states have started closing that gap themselves. If you’re in Uttarakhand, its Uniform Civil Code, in force since January 2026, now asks live-in couples to register their relationship with the state. That buys you clearer rights — in exchange for more state scrutiny than courts had otherwise left alone.
If you’re facing threats right now, here’s what to actually do
“Go file a written complaint at your local police station first. Don’t leave without something to show for it — a stamped copy, or at least the complaint or FIR number. That’s your paper trail, and you’ll need it,” Lalitha recommends.
Start documenting everything as it happens. Save the threatening messages, the call logs, voice notes, and note down anyone who witnessed it. If there’s a specific incident, a medical record or a photo from that day makes your case much stronger.
If the station drags its feet, escalate. Send a written representation to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, or whoever the equivalent senior officer is in your city, and mention your original complaint number.
If that stalls too, a writ petition before the High Court is your strongest move — it’s literally what got the Delhi couple their protection order.
And once you do have a protection order, keep a copy on you, and hand one to your local police station too. You want it on record for next time, if there is one.
According to legal experts, if what you’re dealing with is violence from inside the relationship rather than from your family, your path in looks different. You can go straight to a Protection Officer or a registered NGO service provider in your district, or to a magistrate’s court — you don’t need a police complaint first.
They’re required to help you file a Domestic Incident Report, and that’s what the court acts on. Along the way, hold onto anything that shows you shared a life — joint bills, a shared address on your ID, photos, people who knew the two of you as a couple. That’s exactly what a court will look for.
Thinking about maintenance someday? The same kind of proof matters: how long you lived together, how you split finances, how the world saw you as a couple. Honestly, it’s worth starting to keep that evidence now, while things are good, rather than scrambling for it later.
And if you have children, get the birth registered with both of you named as parents, as early as you can. That record tends to be the first thing courts and institutions reach for if inheritance or custody ever comes up.
Where you can actually go for help
Your District or State Legal Services Authority (DLSA/SLSA) offers free legal aid — including help filing a writ petition — if cost is what’s stopping you.
The NALSA helpline, 15100, can point you to your nearest legal aid centre.
A Protection Officer or a registered NGO service provider is your way in for a domestic violence complaint, and you can go to them directly, no police complaint required first.
And a practising lawyer is who you’ll want for a writ petition to the High Court — right now, that’s your most reliable route if local police just aren’t acting.
The short version
Get a written, acknowledged complaint filed at your local police station. Keep the number.
Save every threat, message, and witness detail as it happens.
If police don’t act, escalate in writing to a senior officer, citing your original complaint.
Still stuck? File a writ petition in the High Court — DLSA/SLSA or the NALSA helpline (15100) can get you free legal aid.
If the danger is inside the relationship, go straight to a Protection Officer or a registered NGO.
Once you have any protection order, keep it close, and file a copy with your local station.
None of that legislative back-and-forth was on the Delhi couple’s mind on 13 August, though. What mattered to them was smaller, and much more concrete: an order they could fold up and carry to a police station. Twelve years after they chose each other, the law finally put it in writing.
The choice was, and always had been, theirs. It’s yours too.
This is a general guide, not a substitute for legal advice. The right path can vary by your state and your situation, so where you can, talk to a lawyer or your nearest legal aid centre before acting on any of this.
