2.4 Consequence of Marriage (Result of Marriage)

Status: husband and wife — the civil status from which all matrimonial rights and duties flow; Personal rights and duties: cohabitation and consortium (subject to protection-order exceptions); mutual fidelity; mutual maintenance according to means; care in illness and old age; Equality: Article 38(6)'s command implemented by the Code — both spouses equal in property and family affairs; the wife enters the husband's joint family and retains her own parental coparcenary rights (Unit 8); Property consequences: the joint-family share; the equal division of property acquired during marriage on divorce (the Code's 50:50 rule for jointly-acquired property — Unit 4); spousal succession on death (Unit 9); daijo/pewa (stridhan-property) protection — the wife's exclusive property; Parental standing: equal parental authority over children born of the marriage (Unit 5); Surname and identity effects (below, 2.9–2.10); evidentiary privileges (a spouse not compellable as a witness against the other in criminal process — the Evidence Act's protection).