annex-india-00 — Marriage Profile, Jurisdictional Annex: India

Anklet Protocol Working Group                                A. Anklet
Internet-Draft                                        ankletio/PULSE-WG
Intended status: Standards Track                           19 July 2026
Expires: 19 January 2027

annex-india-00

Status of This Memo

This document is an Anklet Protocol Working Group Draft. It is the first jurisdictional annex to the Anklet marriage-agreement applicability profile (draft-anklet-marriage). It is a work in progress and MUST NOT be cited as a stable standard.

Abstract

This annex binds draft-anklet-marriage to formation in, or under the law of, the Republic of India. It maps the profile's regime and formality hooks to Indian statute: marriage-regime code points, enforceability-posture disclosure, stamping and electronic-execution formalities, registration triggers, customary-payment documentation under the Dowry Prohibition framework, identifier-handling and privacy constraints, and cross-border execution and recognition. It describes law as of the date of publication for protocol-design purposes only; it is not legal advice, and implementations MUST obtain their own counsel for deployment.

1. Introduction and Scope

This annex applies when a Matter's jurisdiction.country is IND, or when the elected governing law is Indian, or when an instrument formed elsewhere is intended for use or enforcement in India. Where this annex is silent, draft-anklet-marriage and draft-anklet-core apply unmodified.

Statements about Indian law in this annex are informative; statements about what a conforming implementation MUST/SHOULD do in response are normative.

2. Conventions

BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] language. "Profile" refers to draft-anklet-marriage; "core" to draft-anklet-core.

3. Enforceability-Posture Disclosure

Informative: outside the State of Goa (which applies a civil-code community-property regime), prenuptial agreements have no dedicated statutory recognition in India. They are evaluated as contracts under the Indian Contract Act, 1872, and clauses may be tested against Section 23 (public policy). Judicial treatment is mixed and evolving; such instruments commonly function as strong evidence of intent and disclosure rather than as automatically enforceable schedules.

Normative:

1. Before any Party submits participation, the implementation MUST present, and record acknowledgment of, an enforceability-posture disclosure: that the instrument's enforceability in India is not statutorily guaranteed, varies by forum, and that its evidentiary value depends on the fairness of the formation process.
2. The Process Record annexure (core §12.1) is therefore MANDATORY under this annex — it is the instrument's primary evidentiary asset in an Indian forum.
3. For Matters where jurisdiction.subdivision is IN-GA (Goa), the implementation MUST apply the Goa regime code point (Section 4) and MAY present a different posture disclosure reflecting the civil-code regime.

4. Marriage Regime Code Points

This annex registers the following values for jurisdiction_context.regime (profile §4):

Normative: where the Parties' declared religions or an interfaith situation make regime election material, the implementation MUST capture the elected regime explicitly and MUST NOT infer it. Under in-muslim, the customary_payments Section MUST support recording mahr (dower) as a distinct, lawful category separate from prohibited dowry (Section 7).

5. Stamping and Electronic Execution

Informative: agreements attract stamp duty under the Indian Stamp Act, 1899 or state stamp acts, with the article and duty varying by state; unstamped or under-stamped instruments face admissibility consequences. Electronic signatures have statutory recognition under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (Section 3A and the Second Schedule); however, the IT Act's First Schedule excludes certain instruments from electronic execution (including negotiable instruments, powers-of-attorney, trusts, wills, and contracts for the sale or conveyance of immovable property).

Normative:

1. The execution checklist gate (core §7.3) MUST include a stamping item resolved before signature ceremonies begin, bound to the state indicated by jurisdiction.subdivision. Stamp article and duty determination are deployment configuration, not protocol constants.
2. The execution-signature rail (core §11.1(2)) MUST use a mechanism with recognition under the IT Act's Second Schedule, or route to physical (wet-ink) execution with the physical acts recorded as process events.
3. The implementation MUST detect whether the instrument purports to convey or transfer immovable property (as opposed to recording intentions about separate property). If so, electronic execution MUST NOT be offered for that operative part; the implementation MUST either partition the instrument or route the whole to physical execution and, where applicable, registration (Section 6).
4. Witness attestation is RECOMMENDED (two witnesses) even where not strictly required, and witnesses enter the process record as execution actors. Notarization is RECOMMENDED for instruments likely to be used before foreign authorities.

6. Registration Triggers

Informative: under the Registration Act, 1908 (Section 17), instruments that create, declare, assign, limit, or extinguish rights in immovable property of value above the statutory threshold require compulsory registration; unregistered compulsorily registrable documents suffer Section 49 consequences.

Normative: the immovable-property detection of Section 5(3) MUST also drive a registration determination. Where registration is indicated, the execution checklist MUST carry a registration item, and executed MUST NOT be reached on the electronic rail alone for that instrument.

7. Customary Payments and the Dowry Prohibition Framework

Informative: the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 criminalizes giving, taking, and demanding dowry. The Dowry Prohibition (Maintenance of Lists of Presents to the Bride and Bridegroom) Rules, 1985 require signed lists of presents given at marriage. Stridhan (a woman's exclusive property) and mahr are distinct lawful categories.

Normative:

1. The profile's customary_payments schedule (profile §6.3) MUST, under this annex, be renderable in the form contemplated by the 1985 Rules: itemized presents with giver, recipient, description, approximate value, and signatures of both Parties.
2. The implementation MUST record a declaration by both Parties that no dowry was demanded or given as consideration for the marriage, distinct from the presents list.
3. Entries categorized as stridhan or mahr MUST be labeled as such and MUST be attributable to the owning Party in the instrument.
4. A recorded indication of a dowry demand MUST raise a hold-severity risk flag (profile §6.1) and MAY, per deployment policy, trigger the safety-hold pathway (profile §6.2).

8. Identifiers and Privacy

Informative: the Aadhaar Act, 2016 and its regulations restrict storage and use of Aadhaar numbers; the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP) governs consent, purpose limitation, erasure, and cross-border transfer of personal data.

Normative:

1. The implementation MUST NOT store Aadhaar numbers. Where an Aadhaar-based ceremony or credential is used by a Verification Provider, only the normalized Verification Outcome (core §11.2) and evidence references enter the Matter.
2. Consent artifacts referenced in the envelope (core §5.1) MUST satisfy DPDP notice-and-consent requirements, including for any cross-border processing disclosed to the Parties.
3. The erasure guidance of core §15 is elevated: for cancelled and expired Matters, deletion within a defined period is REQUIRED, subject only to legal-hold obligations.
4. Identity documents processed for proofing MUST be handled per the verification rail's minimization rules; raw document images MUST NOT appear in any shared surface or instrument annexure — only proofing outcomes.

9. Cross-Border Execution and Recognition

Informative: India is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention; documents executed abroad for use in India are typically apostilled (Convention states) or consular-attested (others). Foreign judgments are recognized under CPC Sections 13 and 44A only from notified reciprocating territories; the United States is not one, so instruments and decrees may require fresh proceedings in India.

Normative:

1. Where a Party executes outside India, the execution checklist MUST include the applicable formalization item (notarization plus apostille, or consular attestation) and its evidence reference.
2. The instrument MUST state the recognition posture between the Parties' jurisdictions (profile §9.1) including, where relevant, the non-reciprocating-territory consequence.
3. Remote ceremonies across time zones follow profile §9.3 unmodified.

10. Safety

Informative context for deployments: the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions on cruelty form the backdrop of the profile's safety class.

Normative: nothing in this annex creates a reporting obligation transmitted through the protocol; safety-class handling (profile §6.2, core §9.3/§10) applies unmodified, and implementations MUST NOT weaken it in response to any perceived local reporting norm — routing to support resources is a deployment concern outside the Matter record.

11. Registry Considerations

This annex registers: the regime code points of Section 4 (Profile registry, marriage-agreement/regime); no new blocking-reason codes (stamping and registration items travel under execution_checklist_incomplete).

12. Security Considerations

Core and profile considerations apply. Annex-specific: stamp and registration evidence are attractive forgery targets; their evidence references SHOULD be independently re-fetchable from the issuing rail (core §11.4 applies to e-stamp and registration providers as to any Verification Provider).

13. Privacy Considerations

Sections 7 and 8 are the operative privacy text: presents lists and regime elections reveal religious affiliation and family finances — category-sensitive data under DPDP. They inherit standard class at most, and analytics or model-training use is prohibited by profile §11 regardless of class.

14. References

Informative: Indian Contract Act 1872; Hindu Marriage Act 1955; Special Marriage Act 1954; Indian Christian Marriage Act 1872; Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1936; Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 and 1985 Rules; Indian Stamp Act 1899; Information Technology Act 2000; Registration Act 1908; Aadhaar Act 2016; DPDP Act 2023; CPC 1908 ss. 13, 44A; Hague Apostille Convention 1961.

Normative: draft-anklet-core-00; draft-anklet-marriage-00; [RFC2119]; [RFC8174].