I Was Married Before I Turned 18 and Want Out: Annulling a Child Marriage

If you were under eighteen when you were married, the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 lets you, and only you, annul a child marriage by a petition to the district court, which in Bengaluru means the Family Court, filed before you complete two years of attaining majority, so before your twentieth birthday. Karnataka goes further. Under Karnataka Act 26 of 2017 every child marriage solemnised in the State on or after 3 March 2018, the date the amendment came into force, is void ab initio. Either way you leave court with a decree of nullity, not a divorce, and a child of the marriage stays legitimate.

Part of the family and divorce law practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.

Written for a woman of nineteen or twenty, married off at sixteen or seventeen, who wants the marriage ended with no divorce on record. A man married before twenty-one is covered too. Maintenance has its own post and one paragraph here.

Is my marriage valid at all if I was under 18 when it happened?

Under the central Act it is a real marriage today and stays one until you end it. Yours was a child marriage under Section 2(b) because one contracting party was a child under Section 2(a), a girl under eighteen or a boy under twenty-one, and Section 3(1) makes every such marriage voidable at the option of the contracting party who was the child. The proviso to Section 3(1) allows the petition only by the party who was a child, and a Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court applied that rule in May 2023, setting aside a decree an adult husband had obtained on the footing that his bride had been a minor at their 2008 wedding.

Karnataka changed the starting point. Karnataka Act 26 of 2017 inserted sub-section (1A) into Section 3: notwithstanding sub-section (1), every child marriage solemnised on or after the date the amendment came into force "shall be void abinitio". Commencement was left to a State notification, and the notification of 1 March 2018, superseding an earlier one, appointed 3 March 2018. The High Court's 2023 decision refers instead to 26 April 2017, the Gazette publication date. For a wedding between those two dates, have the point checked. The amendment is prospective, so an earlier Karnataka wedding stays voidable under the central rule.

Key takeaway. Only the spouse who was the child can end a voidable child marriage. In Karnataka, for a wedding on or after 3 March 2018, the marriage was never valid, and the petition asks the court to say so.

Three dates decide which rule you are under.

What is the deadline to annul a child marriage, and what if I have already missed it?

Before your twentieth birthday. Section 3(3) allows the petition at any time before the child completes two years of attaining majority, and Section 3 of the Majority Act 1875 fixes majority at eighteen. For a woman married at sixteen or seventeen who is nineteen now, that leaves months. A minor petitions through a guardian or next friend along with the Child Marriage Prohibition Officer under Section 3(2). For a man the arithmetic is harsher: he is a child until twenty-one under Section 2(a) but attains majority at eighteen, so the literal words of Section 3(3) close his window at twenty. File at once.

If the window has closed, the Section 3(1) petition is gone and three things remain. First, a Karnataka wedding on or after the commencement date was void ab initio, and Explanation (b) to Section 7(1) of the Family Courts Act 1984 gives the Family Court jurisdiction over a declaration as to the validity of a marriage or matrimonial status. No judgment I have read decides whether the two-year limit binds that declaration, so treat it as a fallback. Second, divorce under your personal law, which leaves you a divorcee. Third, Section 12, where the minor was enticed away, taken by force or deceit, or sold or trafficked, and Section 14, where the wedding breached a Magistrate's injunction, make a child marriage void everywhere regardless of the calendar.

Deadline warning. Married at seventeen and nineteen now? The Section 3(1) petition must be filed before your twentieth birthday, not within two years of leaving him or of the wedding. The window runs from the day you turned eighteen.

Which court do I go to, and what does the petition ask for?

The Family Court. Section 2(e) defines the district court as the Family Court in any area where one exists under Section 3 of the Family Courts Act 1984, and Explanation (a) to Section 7(1) of that Act gives it every proceeding for a decree of nullity. Section 8 of the 2006 Act lets you file where the husband resides, where you reside on the date of filing, where the wedding was solemnised, or where you last lived together.

Every fact in the petition must be proved: your date of birth and its proof, the date and place of the wedding and its proof, the dates of majority and filing so the two-year window is visibly met, and an itemised list of the money, ornaments and gifts that changed hands on both sides. The prayers are a decree of nullity under Section 3(1), which in Karnataka becomes a declaration that the marriage is void under Section 3(1A) with annulment pleaded in the alternative, the return of gifts under Section 3(4), maintenance and residence under Section 4 if you want them, and custody under Section 5. The decree records that the marriage is annulled, or in Karnataka that it was void from the start, so you are free to marry again and no certificate will ever call you divorced.

What I tell people at the first meeting is to stop thinking about the marriage and think about two documents and one date: the paper that proves your age, the paper that proves the wedding date, and the day you turn twenty. The husband's consent is irrelevant, his absence is irrelevant, and the year or two you lived with him is irrelevant, because Section 3 carries no cohabitation bar of the kind Section 12(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act imposes on the fraud ground. Where these petitions turn is on proof of age when the school record and the Aadhaar card disagree, and on the wedding date when there was no registration and the invitation card has vanished.

What happens to the gifts, the maintenance and my child?

The gifts go back, both ways. Section 3(4) requires the court, while granting the decree, to direct both parties and their parents or guardians to return the money, valuables, ornaments and other gifts received at the wedding from the other side, or their value, after notice to show cause.

Maintenance is Section 4, in one paragraph. While granting the decree the court may make an interim or final order that the husband, or his parent or guardian if he was himself a minor, pay you maintenance until you remarry, and where you are the petitioner it may also order your residence until then. Section 7 lets the court vary these orders later. The routes outside the annulment are in the guide on maintenance for a wife married as a minor.

Your child is legitimate and custody turns on welfare. Section 6 deems every child begotten or conceived before the decree legitimate for all purposes, and for Hindus Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act says the same. Section 5 requires the court to decide custody with the child's welfare as the paramount consideration, allows access for the other parent, and allows an order for the child's maintenance. The questions are the ones that run through any dispute handled by the child custody practice: who has cared for the child and where the child is settled.

Will my husband or my parents be prosecuted, and can I be?

You cannot be. The Act punishes three classes of people and a girl married as a child is in none of them. Section 9 punishes a male adult above eighteen who contracts a child marriage, Section 10 whoever performs, conducts, directs or abets it, and Section 11 any person having charge of the child who promotes the wedding, permits it, or negligently fails to prevent it, including by attending. The Supreme Court, in Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action v Union of India (18 October 2024), read Section 9 as meaning that a woman, regardless of her age, is not liable for entering a child marriage, while a man between eighteen and twenty-one who marries a girl under eighteen is.

The central sentences are rigorous imprisonment up to two years or a fine up to one lakh rupees or both under Section 9, and imprisonment together with a fine, within the same limits, under Sections 10 and 11, with no mandatory minimum. The proviso to Section 11(1) spares women from imprisonment, so a mother faces a fine. Section 15 makes every offence cognisable and non-bailable. Karnataka Act 26 of 2017 hardened all of this for offences in the State: a minimum of one year's rigorous imprisonment in Sections 9, 10 and 11, a one-year minimum for disobeying an injunction under Section 13(10), the proviso shielding women omitted from both, so a mother can be jailed here, and a new Section 15A under which every police officer shall take cognizance suo motu.

The petition and any prosecution are separate proceedings, but what you plead is a public record, and in Karnataka the police must act on their own motion, so a petitioner should know before filing that her parents may face a case she cannot switch off. If you were under eighteen when the marriage was consummated, that was rape. Exception 2 to Section 63 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 exempts a husband only where "the wife not being under eighteen years of age", the position the Supreme Court reached in Independent Thought v Union of India (11 October 2017) for the old Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, and the POCSO Act applies to a husband as to anyone else. Section 219(6) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita bars cognizance of that offence once more than a year has passed. Whether to raise it is your decision alone.

Does the Hindu Marriage Act give me a way out too?

Not for a bride married at sixteen or seventeen. Section 5(iii) of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 requires the bridegroom to have completed twenty-one and the bride eighteen, but Section 11 makes a marriage void only for breach of clauses (i), (iv) and (v) of Section 5, and the voidable grounds in Section 12 do not include age either. The one age-based ground, Section 13(2)(iv), lets a wife seek divorce where her marriage was solemnised before she attained fifteen and she repudiated it after fifteen but before eighteen. A girl married at sixteen never qualifies, and even where it applies the result is a divorce, not a nullity. The wider Hindu law is in the guide on annulment of marriage in India. For a child marriage the 2006 Act is the route.

The 2006 Act is secular in its terms: Section 1(2) extends it to the whole of India and to all citizens of India outside India. Where a personal law would treat the marriage as valid, the Union told the Supreme Court in the 2024 case that High Courts had differed and asked for a declaration that the 2006 Act prevails. The Court declined, recording that a Bill introduced in December 2021 to give the Act overriding effect was before Parliament, and kept the question open. As at September 2026 the central Act carries no such provision, so a non-Hindu petitioner should expect the point to be argued and should plead the Karnataka sub-section (1A) wherever it applies.

Step by step: how the petition runs, and how long it takes

1. Fix your date of birth on paper: school leaving certificate, birth certificate or SSLC marks card.
2. Fix the wedding date and place on paper: invitation card, photographs, the priest or two witnesses, any registration. In Karnataka this date decides whether the marriage is voidable or void.
3. Count the deadline and write it down: two years from the day you turned eighteen.
4. Draft the petition with every prayer: nullity or a declaration of voidness, the itemised return of gifts under Section 3(4), maintenance and residence under Section 4, custody under Section 5.
5. File in the Family Court for a place permitted by Section 8, with an affidavit and the documents from steps 1 and 2. Expect a counselling reference, because Section 9 of the Family Courts Act obliges the court to attempt a settlement where the case allows.
6. Evidence and decree: your affidavit, the age document, the wedding proof, cross-examination, then the decree with the Section 3(4) order. The other side has thirty days to appeal under Section 19 of the Family Courts Act, none if the decree went by consent.

An uncontested petition, where the husband admits the dates, commonly runs several months to about a year from filing to decree, and a contested one runs longer. Those are indicative ranges, not a promise.

Common mistake. Filing for divorce under Section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act. A divorce petition concedes that the marriage was valid, leaves you a divorcee for life, and carries no Section 3(4) order for the return of gifts. Waiting for the husband to agree is the second mistake: Section 3 needs nothing from him.

Two things the decree does, and one it does not.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified advocate for advice on your specific situation.

Related Guides

Nullity petitions, custody and the prosecution that can follow are handled through the family and divorce law practice and, where a complaint is on foot, the criminal defence practice.

• Annulment of Marriage in India: Void, Voidable, Grounds and Time Limit
• Maintenance for a Wife Married as a Minor: Rights
• Family Court Procedure in India: A Step-by-Step Guide