Deliberate delay is one of the most wearing tactics in matrimonial litigation, and the Kanpur Family Court — like all Family Courts under the Family Courts Act — is designed to discourage it. Let me give you the full range of tools available to you, because passive endurance of delay is not your only option.

Your most important immediate protection is financial security during the delay. If you have not already secured interim maintenance under Section 24 of the Hindu Marriage Act, file that application immediately — because while a dilatory spouse may succeed in slowing the main proceedings, they cannot prevent the court from fixing your monthly financial support. An interim maintenance order ensures that delay does not work as economic pressure against you, which is often precisely its purpose. Alongside this, ensure that any interim custody arrangement is also formalised, so delay does not destabilise your children's living situation.

On the procedural front, your counsel has several active tools. First, oppose every unwarranted adjournment on the record and ask the court to impose costs under Order XVII of the Civil Procedure Code when adjournments are sought repeatedly without genuine cause — courts in Kanpur's Family Court do impose costs on dilatory parties, and the accumulation of cost orders makes delay expensive. Second, where your spouse is absent without explanation, move for the case to be proceeded ex-parte rather than routinely adjourned to accommodate non-attendance. Third, if adjournments are being sought through procedural applications — successive interim applications, objections to documents, unnecessary examination requests — your counsel can oppose each one specifically and seek the court's directions for day-to-day or closely-spaced hearings. Fourth, if the delay has become egregious and the court is not managing the timeline adequately, your counsel can approach the Allahabad High Court with an application for expeditious disposal, which courts grant in deserving cases.

The retired Principal District and Sessions Judges at the Kanpur panel of Aapka Legal Advice — including judges with 5.0 ratings who have managed busy matrimonial dockets — know exactly which applications move a stalled case forward and how to present them persuasively. The mindset I recommend: patient and proactive simultaneously. Secure your financial position, oppose delay on the record at every date, and make delay costly for the party causing it rather than merely frustrating for the party suffering it.