The right to support and care is known as maintenance. Hindu Law gives special consideration to the concept of maintenance. One could argue that providing maintenance is a man’s personal duty in raising a family, providing for and supporting the members. The concept of maintenance aims at putting the wife back to the same position and comfort and lifestyle as she was at the time when her marriage existed. The amount of maintenance to be awarded depends on the discretion of a family court and may have to be paid by the husband on a monthly basis or in a lump sum. In Criminal Revisions filed by both husband and wife regarding the reduction of the maintenance amount and enhancement of the maintenance amount, respectively, a single judge bench of Prem Narayan Singh J, held that “well-qualified spouses should not be left idle or to remain idle basing on their maintenance amount received from their husband” and reduced the maintenance amount from Rs.60,000 per month to Rs.40,000 per month. The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld that “Neither a married woman is debarred from doing a job, nor a married woman living separately and also obtaining maintenance from her husband is prevented from employing herself and to earn some income from her livelihood.” The court also relied on the case ‘Jasbir Kaur Sehgal V District Judge Dehradun’ and Kalyan Dey Chaudhary V Rita Dey Chaudhary to emphasize that the husband should provide maintenance to wife to enable her to maintain a reasonable standard of living, but not for the purpose of encouraging idleness. In Mamta Jaiswal V Rajesh Jaiswal, the Honourable High Court of Madhya Pradesh held that well qualified spouses desire to remain idle and not finding a sense of purpose through a source of livelihood has to be discouraged. It is important to note that enabling well qualified wives to misuse the provision of maintenance undermines the protective nature of the law meant to enable maintenance of needy people who cannot maintain themselves. Furthermore, in Damanreet Kaur Vs. Indermet Juneja it was held that if the wife was previously working and then resigned she is not entitled to maintenance under the Domestic Violence Act. The question whether the wife was forced to resign or resigned of her own accord is a question to be considered by the court during trial and also the question whether the reason given by her for resigning were satisfactory or not. Importantly, in Indian law other cases have taken factors like the income of the husband and the wife into account to decide if the wife is entitled to maintenance or not.
Contributed By – Ahaana Kashyap
