Parents can evict abusive adult children from their house: Delhi HC

Children who abuse their parents while staying with them in their house can be evicted from the property, the Delhi High Court has ruled.

Justice Manmohan, in his ruling, specified that the house need not be self-acquired or owned by the parents.

“As long as the parents have the legal possession of the property, they can evict their abusive adult children,” the court said, adding that even the “courts have repeatedly acknowledged the right of senior citizens or parents to live peacefully and with dignity”.

This is a major improvisation in a 2007 law that had left it to state governments to frame rules to protect the life and property of senior citizens.

The court’s verdict came after it heard an appeal filed by an alcoholic former policeman and his brother, challenging a Maintenance Tribunal’s October 2015 order to evict the two from the residence where their elderly and ailing parents lived.

The brothers had contended that the tribunal had exceeded its jurisdiction in passing the eviction order as there was no claim for maintenance and the relief was granted only on the allegations of physical assault, maltreatment, harassment and forceful ouster of their parents from the property.

The alcoholic, whose services were terminated from Delhi Police, had said that even in cases of parental abuse, no eviction order could be passed under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007.

The court, while interpreting the provisions of the Act, said the “senior citizens’ maintenance tribunal can issue eviction order to ensure that senior citizens live peacefully in their house without being forced to accommodate a son who physically assaults and mentally harasses them or threatens to dispossess them”.