Arya Samaj Court Marriage Nehru Place & Chirag Dilli

Quick answer: This market runs on family partnership firms, and the Indian Partnership Act, 1932 governs them whether anybody has read it or not. Section 42: “Subject to contract between the partners a firm is dissolved—… (c) by the death of a partner” — so the default is that the firm ends, and “subject to contract” is the escape these firms most often do not have. Section 4 needs no written deed for a firm to exist at all. Then section 37, the one that decides what a family gets while the survivors trade on “without any final settlement of accounts”: the outgoing partner or his estate is entitled “at the option of himself or his representatives” to a share of the profits attributable to the use of his share of the firm’s property “or to interest at the rate of six per cent per annum” on it — an option, and the Act says it belongs to his representatives. Section 46 says it three more times: on dissolution “every partner or his representative” may have the property applied to the debts and the surplus distributed “among the partners or their representatives” — a right asserted against the people in possession. Four mentions of a “representative”, and the Act defines the word nowhere and prescribes no procedure for establishing one. So a household travels two steps, not one: establish the marriage, then establish through succession law that it makes her his representative. Fairness too, quoted not hidden: section 35 — where contract keeps the firm alive, the estate “is not liable for any act of the firm done after his death”; and the proviso to s.37, under which a buy-out option “duly exercised” ends the profit share, but a partner who does not comply “in all material respects” is “liable to account” anyway. A 1996 ceremony already married you under section 7; only the entry is missing, with no cut-off. Ceremony ₹5,100, with registration ₹7,100, a wedding already held ₹6,000, civil route ₹15,000. Registering changes nothing at the firm — no partner is told, no deed amended, no GST touched. We draw no deed, settle no accounts, act in no dissolution, touch no succession or probate, provide no witnesses — and take nothing for any of it.

The Default Is That the Firm Ends

Nehru Place is built out of small firms. Four hundred square feet on a first floor, a shutter, a name board, two or three men whose names are on a sheet of paper somewhere — brothers, or a man and his brother-in-law, or two cousins who started in 1996 with one counter between them. Chirag Dilli, Kalkaji and the lanes behind the market house most of the people who run them.

So this page is about a provision of the Indian Partnership Act, 1932 that those firms are governed by whether or not anybody in them has ever read it.

First, what a firm is. Section 4:

“‘Partnership’ is the relation between persons who have agreed to share the profits of a business carried on by all or any of them acting for all. Persons who have entered into partnership with one another are called individually ‘partners’ and collectively ‘a firm’, and the name under which their business is carried on is called the ‘firm name’.”

Notice that nothing in that definition requires a written deed. A partnership is a relation between persons who have agreed to share profits. In this market a great many firms exist on precisely that footing: an understanding between two brothers, a shared current account, and no document that anybody could produce.

Now the provision this page is really about. Section 42, headed Dissolution on the happening of certain contingencies:

“Subject to contract between the partners a firm is dissolved— (a) if constituted for a fixed term, by the expiry of that term; (b) if constituted to carry out one or more adventures or undertakings, by the completion thereof; (c) by the death of a partner; and (d) by the adjudication of a partner as an insolvent.”

Read clause (c) with the opening words, because together they say something most people in this market have the wrong way round.

The default position in law is that the firm is dissolved when a partner dies. It is not that the firm carries on and the family gets bought out. The firm ends — unless there is a contract between the partners providing otherwise.

“Subject to contract between the partners” is doing all the work there, and it is exactly the thing these firms do not have. A partnership deed with a continuation clause is a normal, sensible document that any accountant will draw. It is also a document that two brothers who have run a shop together for twenty-nine years very often never got round to, because nothing ever needed it.

And one point of fairness, since this is a page about families. Where the firm is kept alive by contract, section 35 protects the estate on the other side: “Where under a contract between the partners the firm is not dissolved by the death of a partner, the estate of a deceased partner is not liable for any act of the firm done after his death.” So a widow does not inherit liability for what the surviving partners do afterwards. That is a real protection and it deserves saying, because the fear of inheriting a firm's debts is one of the commonest fears we hear in this market.

Where the marriage comes into it is one step further on, and it is where the rest of this page goes. Whether the firm dissolves or continues, what the family is owed has to be claimed by somebody — and the Act names that somebody in a way that it never explains.

“At the Option of Himself or His Representatives” — and the Six Per Cent

Section 37 is the provision that decides what a dead partner's family actually gets while nothing has been settled, and it is worth setting out whole:

“Where any member of a firm has died or otherwise ceased to be a partner, and the surviving or continuing partners carry on the business of the firm with the property of the firm without any final settlement of accounts as between them and the outgoing partner or his estate, then, in the absence of a contract to the contrary, the outgoing partner or his estate is entitled at the option of himself or his representatives to such share of the profits made since he ceased to be a partner as may be attributable to the use of his share of the property of the firm or to interest at the rate of six per cent per annum on the amount of his share in the property of the firm.”

Three things in that sentence matter in this market, and they matter in order.

One — it applies precisely when nothing has been settled. The trigger is the surviving partners carrying on the business with the firm's property without any final settlement of accounts. That is not an unusual state of affairs. It is the ordinary state of affairs in a market where a shutter opens the next morning because it has to.

Two — it is an option, not an award. The entitlement is to a share of the profits attributable to the use of his share of the firm's property, or to interest at six per cent per annum on the amount of his share. Which of the two is a choice, and the choice can matter enormously: in a firm that is doing well, a share of profits is worth a great deal more than six per cent, and in a firm that is barely trading, the opposite.

Three — and this is the whole of the page: the Act says whose choice it is. “At the option of himself or his representatives.” The man is dead, so it is not his. It is his representatives' — and the Act does not say who they are, does not define “representative” anywhere, and says nothing whatever about how anybody is to establish that they are one.

Picture the room, because it is a real room. The surviving brothers are in the shop with the stock, the supplier relationships, the GST login, the current account and the name board. The widow is somewhere else with a position in law and no document that states it. The option under section 37 is hers to exercise, and exercising an option means being recognised, by the other side and if necessary by a court, as the person entitled to exercise it.

The proviso is part of the honest picture, and we are quoting it rather than leaving it out:

“Provided that where by contract between the partners an option is given to surviving or continuing partners to purchase the interest of a deceased or outgoing partner, and that option is duly exercised, the estate of the deceased partner or the outgoing partner or his estate, as the case may be, is not entitled to any further or other share of profits; but if any partner assuming to act in exercise of the option does not in all material respects comply with the terms thereof, he is liable to account under the foregoing provisions of this section.”

So a purchase option in the deed, duly exercised, cuts off the further share of profits. But look at the second half, which is the part nobody mentions: a partner who purports to exercise the option and does not comply with its terms in all material respects is liable to account under the earlier words of the section. Half-exercising a buy-out clause does not get a surviving partner out of section 37.

What we will not do, and cannot do, is tell you how any of that applies to any firm. Whether there was a contract to the contrary, what anybody's share in the property was, which limb of the option is better, whether a purchase option was duly exercised — those are accounts questions and legal questions, and they belong to a chartered accountant and an advocate. They are a very long way outside a marriage service.

On Dissolution, the Surplus Goes to “Partners or Their Representatives”

If the firm does dissolve — the default under section 42(c) — there is a further provision in the same vocabulary.

Section 46, headed Right of partners to have business wound up after dissolution:

“On the dissolution of a firm every partner or his representative is entitled, as against all the other partners or their representatives, to have the property of the firm applied in payment of the debts and liabilities of the firm, and to have the surplus distributed among the partners or their representatives according to their rights.”

Three times in one sentence, the Act hands a right to a representative. The right to have the property applied to the debts. The right to have the surplus distributed. And the right to assert both against the other partners or their representatives.

And three times, it declines to say who a representative is.

That is a remarkable piece of drafting to sit next to the rest of this website. Elsewhere we have written about statutes that name a spouse and go quiet on evidence. This Act does not even name a spouse. It names a representative — a category defined somewhere else entirely, in the law of succession, which is itself a subject this office does not touch — and builds the family's whole position in the firm on it.

So the chain a widow in this market has to complete runs like this. She is entitled under section 46, or has the option under section 37, as her husband's representative. Whether she is his representative turns on the law of succession. And every route through the law of succession begins by establishing that she was his wife.

She was, from the day of the rites. Section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 treats the carrying out of either side's customary rites as the act that solemnises a marriage, so a ceremony in 1996 married them in 1996 and no absence of paper has touched it since. And section 8 of the same Act says in terms what registration is for: to make a marriage easier to prove. What is missing from this household is not the marriage. It is the first link in the chain.

And it is a cheap link, available on any working day. A 1996 ceremony is registrable today. No time limit was ever imposed on it, so none has expired, and the step-by-step is on our late registration page. All the waiting has cost is one of the two fixed figures in Delhi's 2014 Order — ₹500 if the filing lands inside the second stretch of sixty days, ₹1,000 once beyond it — either of which the ADM or the DM can let go, and the amount after thirty years is the amount after three months.

What This Office Has Nothing To Do With

This page sets out a commercial statute, so the boundary belongs here at the front rather than buried at the end.

We do not touch firms. We do not draw partnership deeds, review them, or advise on what any clause means. We do not settle accounts, value a share in a firm, work out what anybody is owed, or say which limb of an option is better. We do not act in a dissolution, a winding-up, a retirement, an admission of a partner, or any dispute among partners or with their families.

We do not do the registry work either — no registration of firms, no changes in constitution, no GST, no trade licence, no Udyam, no bank or current-account work. And succession, inheritance, estates, letters of administration, succession certificates, probate and property are all outside this office entirely, which matters on this page because the word the Act uses is representative and that word lives in the law of succession.

We appear before no authority, tribunal, Registrar or court, and we take no money for any of the above at any price.

What this office does is two things. It performs the Arya Samaj ceremony, and it gets marriages entered on the government register.

Then why set out the Partnership Act at all? Because sections 37 and 46 place a dead partner's whole position in the hands of his representatives, and never once say who they are or how anybody shows it — and the first link in every chain that answers that question is a marriage. Closing that one link is the only thing on this page that we sell. Everything else here is set out so that a household in this market knows what it is walking into, and knows that what it needs is a chartered accountant and an advocate rather than us.

A Word the Act Uses Four Times and Never Defines

It is worth counting. In the two provisions this page turns on, the Act hands something to a “representative” four separate times — once in section 37 (“at the option of himself or his representatives”) and three times in section 46 (“every partner or his representative”, “all the other partners or their representatives”, “among the partners or their representatives”).

And it defines the word nowhere. Section 4 defines partnership, partners, firm and firm name. Nothing in the Act defines a representative, and nothing in it sets up any procedure for identifying one.

That is not sloppy drafting, and we should say so. A commercial statute about firms has no business restating the law of succession; who a man's representatives are is a question for other legislation, and the separation is correct. But the consequence in a market like this one is specific and it is severe.

Three things follow.

One — the family's position is asserted from outside the business, against people inside it. Section 46's own words are “as against all the other partners or their representatives”. The Act contemplates the representative as a claimant against the continuing partners. The continuing partners are in possession of everything — the premises, the stock, the accounts, the relationships — and the representative is in possession of a legal position.

Two — the clock runs while the question is open. Section 37 applies while the business carries on without a final settlement. Every month that passes without the representative being recognised is a month in which profits are made and a share accrues, or six per cent accrues, to somebody nobody has yet accepted is entitled to it. Delay does not pause the entitlement; it enlarges the argument.

Three — and this is the part that ought to be obvious and never is: the question arrives all at once, with several bodies asking it in different words. The surviving partners ask who the representative is. The bank asks who may operate the account. The accountant asks in whose name the share stands. If it goes to court, the court asks for proof. Four different vocabularies, one underlying question, and exactly one document that answers it in all four at once.

That is the argument, and it is not an argument about money. A certificate does not increase anybody's share in a firm by a rupee. What it does is turn the first and most basic link in the chain — was she his wife — from something to be argued about into something to be looked at. In a market where the other side is a brother who has been at the next counter for twenty-nine years, that is not a small difference.

The Sentence This Website Keeps Reaching

By the forty-first page the pattern is no longer a curiosity.

Across fields with nothing in common, Parliament attaches something of real value to being a spouse, a dependant or a representative — and then says nothing at all about how that is to be shown.

An Act for the elderly puts the maintenance duty on whichever relative would inherit, leaving heirship to be settled out of sight. Railway legislation reorders its entire list of dependants according to whether a dead passenger had married, with not a word on evidence. A labour statute lets a union's fund pay a member's dependants on his death, defines the word nowhere and prescribes no procedure at all. Legislation for migrant workmen requires a dead man's next of kin to be told, and never identifies who that is. Acquisition law builds its household around his or her spouse and counts widows, divorcees and women deserted by families separately, with nothing on proof. A statute for Delhi's unauthorised colonies carries recognition out to their legal heirs and halts. Gratuity, provident funds, pensions, insurance, rent control, workmen's compensation — every one delivers something to a wife, and none says what the man across the counter is meant to examine.

The Partnership Act does the same thing at one further remove, which is what makes it worth a page. It does not name a wife or a dependant at all. It names a representative — and so it does not merely leave the proof to somebody else, it leaves the whole category to another body of law. A household in this market therefore has to travel two steps, not one: first establish the marriage, then establish, through the law of succession, that the marriage makes her his representative.

One page here points in the opposite direction, and the comparison is instructive. The provision set out on our Kirari and Nithari page does the reverse of all this: it makes a valid marriage its condition and, once that is shown, shuts the door on contrary evidence altogether. Laid against each other, the two make the argument for a certificate without our having to make it: when a statute hands the whole category off to another body of law, the document is all a family begins with; when a statute has chosen to be generous, the document is the key to the generosity.

Supplying that document is the whole of this business. We do not go near firms, accounts, estates or courts. What we do is take a fact that a wedding hall witnessed in 1996 and put it on a register that every one of those four questioners will accept — and in a market of undocumented partnerships between brothers, the sensible time to do that is a year when nobody needs it.

The Provisions, in One Place

Everything above, in one table. The middle column carries the Act's own words unless a row says otherwise.

And one limit covers the whole table: these are provisions of a commercial statute and of the marriage Acts, each serving its own purposes. No row of it tells you whether any firm was dissolved, what any deed provides, what anybody's share in any firm is, who any person's representatives are, which limb of an option is better, whether a purchase option was duly exercised, or what any accountant, Registrar, authority or court would decide.

A Trading Household's Papers, and the Three the File Wants

Files from this market arrive thicker than most and emptier in one specific respect.

A Nehru Place household typically produces: a GST registration certificate, a trade licence, a shop rent agreement or a conveyance for the unit, a current-account cheque book, two or three years of returns, an Udyam registration, a sheaf of supplier ledgers, and sometimes a partnership deed from 2004 that nobody has looked at since. What it does not produce is any document issued by any government naming the two people in the household as husband and wife.

The business papers are worth a paragraph of their own, because people here reach for them first and they do not answer the question. A GST registration shows who the authorised signatory is. A current account shows who may sign a cheque. A trade licence shows who holds it. Every one of those is a record about the business and about the man. Section 37 hands the option to his representatives, and no commercial registration establishes who those are.

The partnership deed is the one document that could change the whole picture, and it is worth finding. If there is one, read the clauses about death and about any purchase option — and read them with an accountant and an advocate rather than with us, because that is their work and not ours. If there is no deed, that is itself the most important fact in the file, because section 42(c) then applies without the contractual escape.

Set against all of that, the registration asks for exactly three items: identity for each of you, age for each of you, and the address each of you is in fact living at. There is nothing further. About the firm it asks nothing at all. No partner has to be told. No deed has to be amended. No GST record has to be touched, no bank informed, no accountant consulted, and nothing about the business changes because a marriage was registered. We say that plainly because in a market of family firms the first worry is almost always that registering will stir something up at the shop. It does not, and we involve nobody.

The address is the usual obstacle here, and it has a particular flavour. Traders' papers tend to show the shop, not the home: the Aadhaar may carry a parental address in Chirag Dilli or Kalkaji while the couple live somewhere else, and the only bill in anybody's own name is for the unit in the market. The order matters: one truthful record in a living applicant's own name at the address actually lived at, then the others behind it — bank, then Aadhaar, then the electoral roll. Where every household paper names a parent, the statutory route to a first document of your own is on our Deoli and Khanpur page, and the full chain from nothing is on our Laxmi Nagar page.

Work it around the market's own clock. The shutters here keep their own hours and a Sunday is not a holiday for everybody. Photograph the papers and send them on WhatsApp whenever suits — free, ten minutes, and it separates the three documents that matter from the twenty that are about the firm.

Name spellings deserve attention in a trading family above all others, because a name has usually been written three ways by three institutions: one way on a school record, another on the firm's registrations, and a third on a bank mandate. It is clerical, not legal. Send us every version and we will say which to standardise on. And on this page it matters doubly, since a chain that runs from a marriage entry through succession to a share in a firm works best when the same name appears at each link.

Refuse every offer to have a document produced for you. A rent paper for premises nobody occupies, an affidavit drafted to say what somebody thinks is needed. In a market where GST filings, bank mandates and firm registrations already sit in official hands, a manufactured paper conflicts with them in plain view — and on a question that may one day be examined by an accountant, it converts a clerical shortfall into something far worse. Everything a marriage file needs in these households can be assembled honestly, usually in an afternoon.

Delhi, or Wherever the Wedding Was Held

Two questions get run together, and separating them saves a wasted trip.

In what place were the rites carried out? Fixed and past. A ceremony in a hall off the Ring Road puts the solemnisation in Delhi; a ceremony in the family's home district puts it there, in that year.

And what address is each of you living at now? That follows the life being led, not the address a trading family's papers happen to print. A couple living in Kalkaji or Chirag Dilli while the business sits in Nehru Place live where they sleep, not where the shutter is. That sounds obvious and it is the single most common confusion in files from this market, because every document the household owns points at the market.

For a household settled here, Delhi answers both and there is nothing to weigh.

The real question arises where the wedding was held in the family's home district years ago, as a great many in this market were. It is settled by two things: the address the two of you occupy at present, and — across the next twenty or thirty years — the place where this paper will be handed over counters, and the person doing the handing. If the business, the bank and the family's whole life are here, the Delhi register is the right one — and on this page that is usually decisive, because the people who will one day ask for it are a few hundred metres from the shop. If the household's real base has moved back to the district, that is the answer instead.

Our view comes to you on the telephone with nothing yet paid, including on the occasions when a straight answer sends the work elsewhere.

And one point that follows from this page's subject. Where a family expects the question raised in two states — the firm here, relatives and land there — the answer is still one entry, not two. A single registration has force in every state of the Union; our Badarpur page prints the constitutional words for it. A second entry doubles nothing and supplies the other side with a rival document — which, in a matter that may be argued in front of an accountant line by line, is the last thing a widow wants in existence.

Two Witnesses in a Market Where Everybody Is Somebody's Partner

Plainly, because the worry is larger than the role. Two men attend, stand where the officer places them, and sign to two propositions: that the couple present are the couple the papers concern, and that the ceremony was performed. Neither warrants anything, neither carries any liability afterwards, and neither is approached about it again. Each brings two documents in his own name — one bearing his photograph, one fixing his address. Nothing is lodged beforehand. Who may stand is on our witnesses page.

The difficulty peculiar to this market is not availability but interest. Everybody in the building is somebody's partner, supplier, landlord or competitor. The obvious witness is the man from the next shutter — and he may, in fifteen years, be on the other side of exactly the question this certificate was obtained to settle. That is not a reason to distrust him. It is a reason not to make the document's corroboration depend on him.

So prefer somebody outside the trade. A relative. A neighbour from Chirag Dilli whose family has been on the same plot for decades and who has no commercial relationship with the firm at all. Somebody whose answer in twenty years cannot be characterised as self-interested by anybody.

Note down more than seems necessary. The spelling his own documents carry. A permanent family address with the district named, not the shop. And a telephone number that reaches somebody other than him. Those three lines decide whether a man can be reached two decades on or whether nobody can.

No part of this is on sale here. There is no figure at which this office produces a witness, and whoever offers you one has earned a flat refusal. A signature from a man who never entered the room is a fault somebody chose to put there — and on a document whose hardest reading will be by professionals paid to look for faults, a chosen one is the one that gets found.

Where the Certificate Should Live When the Asset Is a Business

Three certified copies, and in this market the reasoning is specific. One at home, with the household's own papers — not at the shop. One with family who have no interest in the firm, which is the copy that matters here, because the set of people with a stake in the business and the set of people who can be relied on to hand over a document are not always the same set. And one with a relative in a different city.

And keep it away from the firm's records. This is the one piece of filing advice on this page that is specific to a partnership: the household's own documents and the firm's documents should not live in the same drawer. On the day that matters, the firm's drawer may be in premises the family does not control.

Within the first week, put three things on paper and store that note separately: which office issued the certificate, the date the entry bears, and its serial in the register. With those, a duplicate decades later is one form at a counter. Without them, somebody is working through registers after two names and a year they are guessing at.

Photograph it, open the photograph on her phone rather than yours to be sure it works, and tell one relative outside the business where the original is. Out loud, in plain words.

And read every line on the day it arrives, with both Aadhaar cards open beside it. Spellings hardest, and here with a purpose: check that the name on the marriage entry matches the name as it appears on whatever papers the household will later rely on. After that: each father's name in the form that man himself uses, the two birth dates measured against whichever age document was handed in, the ceremony's date, the pair of addresses, and the serial number the register carries. Found this month, a mismatch costs a form and a few weeks. Found by an accountant fifteen years on, while a share in a firm is being worked out, it is the discrepancy that gets put in a letter.

The Office Question, and Why We Print No Answer

No office is named anywhere on this website, and the reason is practical rather than coy. Where a file belongs is governed by the address in its own written form; the city reorganised its sub-divisional map through 2026; and a name set in type here might be wrong by the time somebody had closed a shutter for a morning to act on it. Read the address to us as the Aadhaar prints it, and at no charge we will work out which office it answers to this month.

Two reassurances, since both come up. Where a boundary moved after a certificate had issued, that certificate is unaffected — it stands, and no part of it is done again. And a register that cannot be located was not destroyed; it followed its area to whichever office took that area on. Where an old entry has gone quiet, the method that works is on our Mayur Vihar Phase 2 page: put it in writing to whoever holds the area now, keeping an RTI in reserve for the point where that produces nothing. Your own application sitting still is a different matter, dealt with on the Lajpat Nagar page, along with the Delhi legislation that fixes deadlines for notified services and makes the officer in default compensate the applicant himself.

Nehru Place, Chirag Dilli and the Blocks Around Them

Ten Things That Go Wrong in a Market of Family Firms

One — assuming the firm simply carries on when a partner dies. Section 42(c) makes dissolution the default. Carrying on requires a contract between the partners that says so.

Two — never getting a deed written because nothing ever needed one. That is exactly the circumstance in which the default applies, and the absence of a deed is the most important fact in the file.

Three — reaching for the GST certificate. It names an authorised signatory. Section 37 hands the option to his representatives, and no commercial registration establishes who those are.

Four — believing the estate inherits the firm's future liabilities. Where the firm is kept alive by contract, section 35 says the estate is not liable for any act of the firm done after the death.

Five — not knowing the entitlement is an option. A share of profits attributable to the use of his share of the property, or six per cent per annum on the amount of his share. Which is better is an accountant's question and can differ by a great deal.

Six — treating a half-exercised buy-out clause as the end of it. The proviso to section 37 says a partner who does not comply in all material respects is liable to account under the section anyway.

Seven — letting time pass in the hope the question settles. Section 37 operates while there is no final settlement. Delay does not pause the entitlement; it enlarges the argument around it.

Eight — keeping the household's papers in the firm's drawer. On the day it matters, that drawer may be in premises the family does not control.

Nine — choosing the man from the next shutter as a witness. He may in fifteen years be on the other side of the very question the document was obtained to settle. Pick somebody outside the trade.

Ten — worrying that registering a marriage will stir something up at the shop. No partner is told, no deed is amended, no registration is touched, and nothing about the business changes.

What We Charge

Every figure this office charges is printed below. Extra certified copies, correcting a wrong entry, apostille and attestation, the fully managed option and the State's own collections all have their own rows on the fee page.

What the State collects is the State's money and never ours, and each rupee returns to you receipted. ₹100 is the Marriage Clerk's share. The 2014 Order loads a further ₹200 onto the application. On the civil route the District cashier takes another ₹15. For an older wedding that Order adds exactly one more sum — ₹500 inside the second sixty days, ₹1,000 beyond them — and the ADM or DM may waive either outright. Three months behind or thirty years, the figure does not move.

A number of things are not for sale here at any price. Producing a witness is not a service of ours. We will not write a ceremony date into a form for a day nobody lived through. We will not issue anything where one of you never attended. We draw no partnership deed, review none, advise on no clause, settle no accounts, value no share, act in no dissolution, winding-up, retirement or partners' dispute, and do no firm registration, GST, trade licence, Udyam or bank work. Succession, inheritance, estates, succession certificates, probate and property are all outside this office. We appear before no authority, Registrar, tribunal or court, and promise nothing about what any accountant, officer or judge will decide. We comment on nobody's caste or community, and conversion is neither proposed nor arranged by us. Where the honest answer is that your money belongs with a chartered accountant and an advocate rather than with a marriage service, that is what you will hear on the first call for nothing — said in the knowledge that it is usually the last remark before the line goes quiet.

Sources, and What This Page Cannot Say

Sourced — the Indian Partnership Act, 1932. Section 4, quoted whole. Section 35, quoted whole. Section 37, its main part and its proviso, quoted in full. Section 42, with its heading and all four clauses. Section 46, quoted whole with its heading. Section 38, quoted in substance. And section 31, described rather than reproduced.

What was confirmed, and against what. Section 42 was read in three independent published copies, including the bare Act on the Government of India's own code repository, and all three gave it in identical words. Sections 4, 35 and 37 including the proviso were read in that same bare Act and confirmed against a second independent copy. Section 38 comes from one published copy only, and is given in substance rather than as a quotation.

And one discrepancy we would rather print than quietly resolve. On section 46, one of the copies we read printed, against that section number, text belonging to section 45 (the provision about liability for acts done after dissolution until public notice is given). A second copy gave section 46 with the heading Right of partners to have business wound up after dissolution and with the text quoted on this page, which matches that heading. We have relied on the copy whose heading and content agree, and we are telling you that the copies differed rather than presenting a single settled text. Nothing on this page turns on more than the phrase “or his representative”, which appears in both of the readings we saw.

What is not sourced at all, and is described as such. Everything on this page about how firms in this market are actually constituted, what deeds typically contain or omit, and how such matters are handled in practice is observation and not statute. We have quoted no partnership deed and relied on none.

Sourced — the marriage law this page leans on. Three provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955: section 7, treating the carrying out of one side's or the other's customary rites as the solemnising act; section 5(ii), under which willingness is one of the conditions a valid marriage must satisfy; and section 8, whose declared object is easier proof of a marriage. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 supplies section 4, opening the civil route to a marriage “between any two persons” and bringing with it that Act's residence requirement together with the month across which a notice may be objected to. Delhi's 2014 Order is the source of Order 8, the ₹200 on an application, the sixty-day measure and both late sums; the ₹100 and ₹15 charges, and the turnaround that department commits to, come from Delhi Revenue Department material. Untrue declarations fall under BNS s.236, and the apostille and attestation figures quoted here are the ones published by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The questions this page cannot answer. Whether any firm was or was not dissolved. What any partnership deed provides, or whether it contains a contract to the contrary within section 37 or section 42. What anybody's share in the property of any firm amounts to. Who any person's representatives are — a question of succession law, which this office does not touch. Which limb of the option under section 37 is better in any case, or whether any purchase option was duly exercised. What any accountant, Registrar, authority or court would decide about anything. In one sentence: this office performs marriages and puts marriages on the register. Firms, deeds, accounts, dissolutions, estates and courts all lie somewhere else entirely; nobody drawing a wage here goes near them or appears before any authority; and none of it is ever charged to anybody. Sections 37 and 46 are printed here for a single reason: between them they hand a dead partner's entire position to his representatives, four times over, and never once say who that is or how anybody establishes it. Supplying the first link in that chain is the only thing we sell. A household with a real question about a firm needs a chartered accountant and an advocate — and any woman may have an advocate appointed for her free, with her means never looked into; the provision behind that, and what legal aid does not reach, are both on our Vikaspuri page.

Before You Call

One — approximately which year, and approximately which place? “Nineteen ninety-six, back home” is enough to begin with. Between them those two facts decide the route and the charge.

Two — is there a written partnership deed, yes or no? We are not going to read it or advise on it. We ask because the answer changes which parts of this page we would want you to have actually heard before the call ends — and because “no” is the answer that makes the rest of it urgent.

Three — have both Aadhaar cards to hand and read us the line as it is printed, not the address either of you would give from habit. If one card shows a parent's house or the shop, say so at the start; it is entirely ordinary here. And mention every spelling either name has appeared under, including on the firm's registrations.

Ring +91 8376863962. Money is not raised until three things have been said to you: the route your own facts fall under, our charge for it, and the separate sum the State collects. And if the honest position is that what you need is an accountant and an advocate rather than anything we sell, that is what you will be told — and the enquiry will have cost you nothing.

Nehru Place and Chirag Dilli — Your Questions62 Questions Answered