S. Ravindra Bhat, J.— This is a wife’s appeal under Section 19 of the Family Courts Act, 1984, directed against a judgment and order decreeing dissolution of her marriage with the respondent (hereafter called “the husband”). This Court had the benefit of considering the Trial court records.

2. The brief facts of the case are that the parties to the proceedings got married on 01.09.2008. It was a second marriage for both of them; the wife had a son - a minor child at the time of the second marriage (named Gautam) and the husband had two daughters, both living with their mother (his divorced first wife). The husband filed for divorce claiming that the wife had treated him with cruelty. He cited several grounds, such as the wife’s persistent demands to adopt the wife’s son; her alleged designs on his property and various other acts of mental cruelty. The most serious charge – and ground – of mental cruelty was the wife’s acts of cruelty, including alleged physical violence, in the form of beating up of the husband’s 93 year old mother, who lived with the couple.

3. The husband alleged in the pleadings and during the course of his evidence that initially the wife behaved prope