Yesterday I told you about a woman in New Delhi who was granted a divorce after she was able to demonstrate to the court that her husband had lied about his age, education, and income. The court decided that these lies constituted fraud and therefore the marriage "contract" should be voided. The idea of fraud annulling a marriage raises a few important issues. The first question must be what kind of fraud is fraudulent enough to void a marriage, and the second question has to be, who makes that decision?

I fully agree that there are marriage deal breakers out there — some things are just non-negotiable. This woman had been promised that she was marrying a man of a certain intelligence and educational background, and this turned out to be false. He is, in the end, literally not the man she married. But who decides which issues are important enough for constitute divorce?

We all have different and extremely personal reasons for getting married and for deciding who we marry. If we find these reasons have been violated, who determines if it is important enough to impact divorce settlements or future support payments?

Imagine a woman decides to divorce her unemployed husband. In this situation, she may be expected to make support payments to him as he has no income. Now imagine that this same woman finds out her ex had an undisclosed criminal record for rape. Is it fair to say that if she'd known about his record she wouldn't have married him and therefore would never have been in the position support him in the first place? If so, should she still be required to make support payments?

Now imagine a ridiculous situation. Let's assume that a man marries a woman because she has natural red hair. For some reason, natural red hair is extremely important to him — maybe redheads have more fun? The marriage goes along for a few years and then suddenly he finds out that his wife does not have naturally red hair, but has been dying it all along.

Is this a good reason for divorce? Is it fair to say that if he'd known the truth, he wouldn't have married her? If not, why not? Who's to decide which reason is reasonable and which reason isn't? Or what's a deal-breaker and what isn't?

Food for thought, anyway.