The advocates
The Matrimonial Law Office is a chambers of two, by choice. Matrimonial work is not the kind of practice that benefits from being handed down a chain of associates — the person who hears the first account of a marriage should be the person who argues the case.
Kanika Rao
Kanika Rao is also a graduate of the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. Her practice centres on maintenance and custody — applications under sections 24 and 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act and section 144 of the BNSS, proceedings under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, and custody and guardianship petitions under the Guardians and Wards Act.
She does most of the chambers' drafting: settlement deeds, separation agreements, custody and visitation schedules, and the affidavits of assets and liabilities that every maintenance proceeding now requires. She also handles the chambers' mediation work, both at the court-annexed Mediation Centre and in private negotiation before a petition is ever filed.
- Education
- Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
- Focus
- Maintenance and alimony, child custody, domestic violence proceedings, settlement drafting, mediation
Rajat Kadyan
Rajat Kadyan read law at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, and was enrolled as an advocate thereafter. His work is weighted towards contested proceedings and the criminal side of matrimonial disputes — petitions under section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act that go to trial, bail and quashing petitions arising out of cruelty and dowry prosecutions, and the conduct of evidence and cross-examination in the Family Court at Gurgaon.
He appears regularly before the District & Sessions Court at Gurgaon and the Punjab & Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, and handles the chambers' protection petition work, where the window between instruction and listing is often a matter of days.
- Education
- Faculty of Law, University of Delhi
- Focus
- Contested divorce, matrimonial criminal defence, quashing and bail, protection petitions
How the chambers works
Both advocates read every new matter. Which of them leads a given case depends on what the case mainly is — a maintenance-driven separation is usually led by Kanika Rao, a matter with a criminal complaint running alongside it usually by Rajat Kadyan — but the second advocate stays across the file throughout. In practice this means an unavailable date does not become an adjournment, and a client who would rather describe an intimate history to a woman advocate, or to a man, is not obliged to do otherwise.
On outcomes. This site carries no success rates, no client names and no testimonials, and none will be supplied on request. Rule 36 of the Bar Council of India Rules does not permit it, and in any event an outcome in one marriage predicts very little about another.
Courts of appearance
- Family Court, Gurgaon — petitions under the Hindu Marriage Act, the Special Marriage Act and the Guardians and Wards Act, and maintenance applications
- Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate and Judicial Magistrates, Gurgaon — proceedings under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and under section 144 BNSS
- District & Sessions Court, Gurgaon — sessions trials, appeals and bail
- Punjab & Haryana High Court, Chandigarh — protection petitions, quashing petitions under section 528 BNSS, first appeals under section 19 of the Family Courts Act, and revisions
- District Courts and High Court of Delhi — matters where jurisdiction lies in Delhi
- Supreme Court of India — transfer petitions under section 25 of the Code of Civil Procedure and petitions seeking dissolution under Article 142
Languages
Consultations and drafting in English and Hindi. Pleadings are filed in the language the court requires; in the Gurgaon district courts that is frequently Hindi, and translations of English documents are prepared as part of the filing rather than as an afterthought.