Abstract
Background:
Marital conflict and disputes involve many issues to be settled between the couples like finance, health, assets, children, postdivorce securities, etc. The traumatic experiences of separation affect their mental health and the future of their children. Not being conscious of their legal rights and court procedures leads to long court litigation, causing distress and trauma to the couples.
Aim:
The aim of the article is to find out the level of psycholegal awareness among couples in conflict, approaching forums like police and courts, and to find the difference between the two groups.
Materials and Methods:
A sample of 30 couples each from court and noncourt forums was taken. The demographic details were taken and a psycholegal checklist was administered. It is a cross-sectional study and exploratory research design was applied.
Results:
There was a significant difference in legal awareness of couples opting for redressal in the court and those opting for counseling in noncourt resolution centers.
Conclusion:
The results indicate that a lack of legal awareness among the couples in the two groups may be leading to lengthy litigation.
Keywords: Legal consciousness court, marital conflict, noncourt resolution, psycholegal
Marriage is considered to be a road to liberation as per Indian ancient wisdom. Today, conflicts have become quite common in marital relationships. There are several factors influencing the minds of the couples like their desires, aspirations, individuality, and expectations from each other once they are tied in the relationship. It is not the incompatibility that leads to serious breaking points in marriage, but the methods applied to resolve it. The styles and the approach of the conflict resolution centers make a remarkable impact on stabilizing the relationship and improving the quality of marriage.[1] Society and the masses are controlled by the state through its law enforcement agencies, but the masses are rarely aware of their legal rights and judicial processes. When individuals encounter such situations to take legal courses, they get anxious and fail to establish their rights through the justice delivery system. It was observed that options selected with legal awareness to deal with marital conflict may help them resolve their problems and reduce their distress. Psycholegal therapy could be an effective solution for marital conflicts. Legal awareness with problem-solving techniques on various common marital problems like financial arrangement, common property interests, and nurturing the children could be sorted out.[2] After independence, many laws on sociocultural aspects of dowry, a joint family system for daughters and daughters-in-law and mother-in-law, domestic violence, and gender differences, which are typical to Indian families have been incorporated, but are not properly implemented and followed which leads to huge court litigation.[3] All these are psycholegal issues in complex marital conflicts resulting in separation and divorce of the couples. Some of them could be because of a lack of legal knowledge, even though laws are enacted based on the sociocultural beliefs of the masses.[4] Unawareness of the laws creates confusion among couples approaching different forums for resolution. it can avoid many legal, ethical, and clinical problems.[5] Many times, it is difficult for legal and mental health professionals to navigate between the judicial processes and the psychological condition of the conflicting couples, or to convince them of the implications of lengthy legal processes. The Association of Family and Conciliation Court follows a few guidelines for evaluating the dynamics of couple conflicts to apply multidisciplinary solutions. There are measures laid to evaluate the intensity of domestic violence in an abusive relationship. Screening and interview rules are followed to differentiate between lethal violence from isolated incidents of hitting or beating in domestic violation cases.[6] Similarly, there are screening methods to decide the fitness of parents in child custody.[7] Baker et al.[8] revealed about assessment of parental alienation and trauma. In Western countries, guidelines of “best practices” in couple conflict resolution are followed. Interviews, questionnaires, and therapies give an understanding of whether marriage is sustained in the long run. There is no comprehensive source of data collected either quantitative or qualitative to provide services for strengthening the families. There are very few studies to test the legal awareness among the conflicting couples, this study is an attempt to find the legal awareness among the couples who approach the courts or other noncourt forums for solutions. However, it was observed in an Indian study that improved awareness about the legal rights of women will strengthen them to understand and analyze their problem, which helps them to seek appropriate relief to address domestic violence. The then Chief Justice of India had said that lack of legal awareness was the “root cause” of “deception, exploitation and deprivation” of their rights. Knowledge of one’s rights and the means of securing them are the “powerful instruments” to bring social and economic progress. The marital conflicts get more malicious once they enter the court when the couples make serious and sometimes false allegations against each other. Legal awareness makes a person free from unnecessary apprehensions about the outcome of the legal action and avoids psychological distress. The study aims to test the legal awareness and consciousness among couples with conflict heading towards divorce or separation. The objective is to evaluate the psycholegal issues and awareness among the couples who are approaching the courts and the resolution centers see the difference between the two groups and find if there is any impact of age on them.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
This cross-sectional observational study was carried out at the Local Sakhi Centres of Women and Child Development Departments of Government, wherein the police refer couples with conflict for counseling. Another group of couples was taken from the alternate dispute resolution center wherein the court refers litigant couples for counseling. The internal Ethics Committee of Osmania University approved and granted the permission on January 1, 2021, before the study was conducted. All the participants were included in the study after obtaining written informed consent.
Selection of participants
Thirty couples each from court and sakhi centers, who are locals of Hyderabad city, were taken. Purposive (resolution center) and random (court) sampling method was adopted. After taking informed consent, demographic details were taken. Legally married couples for the first time, completed a minimum of one year of marriage, either single or both spouses who approached the court or police with some application, temporarily living separately, must read, write, and understand English are included. Those married for more than 15 years, already divorced, undergoing trial in matrimonial cases, and having psychiatric illnesses are excluded.
Tools used
A semistructured questionnaire was used for demographic details. Form A (psycholegal checklist) was developed by the researcher to find out the basic awareness of legal rights and procedures in marital laws. The questionnaire consisted of 10 questions, which have three options “Yes,” “No,” and “I don’t know.” A pool of items was created and legal experts were engaged to select the items based on their construct validity. Reliability was established the alpha value was found to be 0.698.
Procedure
Data were collected from four resolution centers and two district courts; the couples were randomly selected from a list of the cases. After obtaining informed consent from the couples, the psycholegal checklist was administered and the participants were given instructions. The forms were filled without any distractions or breaks.
Statistical analysis
Correlation was computed to know, whether there is any association between the two groups. Paired t-test was applied to see the level of significance scores. An independent two-sample t-test was conducted to see whether there was significance within and between the two groups of couples.
RESULTS
The average age of the wife and husband in noncourt cases was lower when compared to the court cases category [Table 1]. The psycholegal awareness in noncourt resolution-seeking husbands was significantly lower when compared to court cases. It was found that the psycholegal awareness varied between participants as deviation was higher [Table 2]. The psycholegal awareness in noncourt resolution seeking wives was significantly lower when compared to court cases. The deviations indicated that some participants had greater legal awareness within the group [Table 3].
Table 1.
Age of husband and wife seeking court and noncourt resolution
| Status | n | Minimum | Maximum | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Court cases | |||||
| Wife | 30 | 26.00 | 41.00 | 30.97 | 3.63 |
| Husband | 30 | 27.00 | 42.00 | 34.03 | 3.29 |
| Noncourt cases | |||||
| Wife | 30 | 19.00 | 45.00 | 31.23 | 6.64 |
| Husband | 30 | 24.00 | 54.00 | 36.23 | 7.31 |
Table 2.
Comparison of husbands’ psycholegal knowledge in court and noncourt categories
| Variable | Court | Noncourt | t (29) | Cohen’s d | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| ||||||
| Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |||
| Husband | 4.17 | 2.26 | 2.67 | 1.97 | 2.739** | 2.12 |
**p < .001
Table 3.
Comparison of wives on psycholegal knowledge in court and noncourt categories
| Variable | Court | Noncourt | t (29) | Cohen’s d | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| ||||||
| Mean | SD | Mean | SD | |||
| Wife | 3.7 | 2.29 | 1.1 | 1.44 | 5.255** | 1.92 |
**p < .001
DISCUSSION
The psycholegal awareness of court and noncourt groups differ significantly in both husbands and wives, which indicates that the noncourt resolution seeker group possessed significantly less psycholegal awareness. The court litigant couples scored higher, their legal knowledge may be better due to advice given by the legal practitioners. Couples approaching resolution centers scored very low since they have not sought legal advice and legal awareness has the potential to help them to offer appropriate solutions.[1]
In another study, it was also found that age had a significant impact along with qualification and employment, on legal awareness.[3] The impact of qualification, employment, and age can constitute a separate study. In qualification, there is a significant difference, wives are homemakers and husbands are private employees which affects the implementation of maintenance benefits.[9] Issues related to the evaluation of violence, and dowry harassment, have been widely studied,[10] including parental alienation, and adjustment between the couples.[11] This study is an initiative to bring out the need for psycholegal awareness among various stakeholders, which takes into consideration various sociocultural and legal factors in marital conflict.[12] It may also help in taking appropriate measures to avoid domestic violence against wives in marital conflict.
Strengths and limitations
The strength of the study is that a combination of awareness of law and psychology is created; other covariates were not considered. A quantitative technique was used to analyze the results, a qualitative approach can throw more light on the reasons for lack of legal awareness. Some of the limitations of the study are that the sample size was small in several such cases pending and collected from four centers, for noncourt, and from two district courts. The study was conducted in Telangana, a southern state of India, other states have different sets of reasons for conflicts and legal awareness that may vary. The time given by the authorities for each session was limited to 30 min. The psycholegal questionnaire had 10 questions to collect essential areas, more questions can be incorporated to reveal the complete nature of psycholegal awareness.
CONCLUSION
There is a gap between the legal system and the awareness of the law among the conflicting couples. The results further reveal to create awareness among the litigants. Increased divorces are an alarming threat to the institution of family, particularly children. The result of the study shows that preventive measures can save time and distress among conflicting couples from going to court. There is a scope for training in psycholegal counseling for the professionals who counsel couples in the court and allied centers.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the assistance of Divya Devarajan, Incharge, Department of Women and Child Development, Hyderabad, and Ms. Sridevi, The Hon’ble Secretary, Legal Services Authority, Dist. Rangareddy, in granting permission to carry on the survey for this study.
REFERENCES
- 1.Lee SB. Marital therapy for the divorce-seeking couples in the legal systems, South Korea: Family systemic, mental health-related, and socio-economic analyses. Eur Psychiatry. 2011;26(Suppl 2):789. [Google Scholar]
- 2.Lambert NM, Dollahite DC. How religiosity helps couples prevent, resolve, and overcome marital conflict. Fam Relat. 2006;55:439–49.. [Google Scholar]
- 3.Srivastava S, Chauhan S, Patel R, Marbaniang SP, Kumar P, Paul R., et al. Banned by the law, practiced by the society: The study of factors associated with dowry payments among adolescent girls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, India. PLoS One. 2021;16:e0258656. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258656. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 4.Yektatalab S, Seddigh Oskouee F, Sodani M. Efficacy of Bowen theory on marital conflict in the family nursing practice: A randomized controlled trial. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 2016;38:253–60. doi: 10.1080/01612840.2016.1261210. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 5.Melville P. “Gender Implications of Tribal Customary Law: The Case of North-East India”. In: Melville Pereira, et al., editors. Library Catalog (Blacklight) Rawat Publications; 2017. [Last accessed on 28 May 2024]. searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12382346. [Google Scholar]
- 6.Jordan C, Walker R. Guidelines for handling domestic violence cases in community mental health centers. Hosp Community Psychiatry. 1994;45:147–51.. doi: 10.1176/ps.45.2.147. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 7.Gardner RA. Parental alienation syndrome vs. parental alienation: Which diagnosis should evaluators use in child-custody disputes? Am J Fam Ther. 2002;30:93–115.. [Google Scholar]
- 8.Baker AJL, Murray C, Adkins K. Parameters of reunification therapy and predictors of treatment success in high conflict divorce cases: A survey of mental health professionals. J Divorce Remarriage. 2020;61:593–614.. [Google Scholar]
- 9.Radhika K. A Study of Legal Awareness among Women in the Areas of Marriage, Dowry and Divorce. 2018 [Google Scholar]
- 10.Mitcham-Smith M, Henry WJ. High-conflict divorce solutions: Parenting coordination as an innovative co-parenting intervention. Fam J. 2007;15:368–73.. [Google Scholar]
- 11.Paquin-Boudreau A, Poitras K, Cyr F, Godbout É. An interdisciplinary case management protocol for high-conflict families: The evolution of coparental dynamic. J Divorce Remarriage. 2021;62:657–72.. [Google Scholar]
- 12.Kerew K. Cambridge University Press EBooks; 2018. Cross-Cultural Lawyering; pp. 208–14. [Google Scholar]