Q: Is US divorce valid over the globe? We got married in INDIA
A:
Not necessarily. The laws of the particular foreign nation govern whether that nation will acknowledge the validity of the US divorce decree.
In India, for example, a divorce decree by mutual consent is legal, valid and binding.
On the other hand, in a contested divorce case, India will not recognize a divorce obtained on grounds other than the nine grounds enumerated in the Hindu Marriage Act if the parties were married under Hindu law. Some such grounds mirror fault grounds recognized in Texas (e.g. adultery, cruelty). Others have no counterpart in Texas law (e.g. insanity, incurable leprosy, venereal disease, conversion to a non-Hindu faith).
Many family lawyers ignore this nuance. Experienced family lawyers will sometimes include a request for declaratory relief when grounds for divorce exist under the Hindu Marriage Act which do not have a counterpart in Texas law. This can be a difficult task because judges here are reluctant to make a judicial pronouncement that a person has a loathsome disease like leprosy or VD). In the case of conversion to a non-Hindu faith, US courts historically have been reluctant to challenge the sincerity of a individual person's statement of their own religious belief, so if the respondent says he/she is still Hindu, you may not be able to persuade a judge to make a fact-finding contrary to what the respondent states.
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