The Supreme Court in a recent case sought the Central Government’s response on the filing of a PIL for having a fixed manner to ascertain the maintenance to be given by the husband. Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure describes the order for the maintenance of the wives, children, and parents.
Maintenance is an important aspect in the cases of divorce. It becomes complicated to ascertain it as every case has different facts and issues; therefore it becomes very difficult to calculate the amount of maintenance.
The maintenance is not granted to the wife who is able to maintain herself in the way her husband used to keep her. Therefore, the amount of maintenance holds an essential part in the lives of women who are not working. The situation becomes worse when the women also get custody of the children and she is not working.
A bench of Justices Indu Malhotra and R Subhash Reddy issued notices to the Ministry of Social Justice, Ministry of Women and Child Development and National Legal Services Authority while tagging the matter with the similar petition.
The Court has also asked the senior advocates to give their suggestions for the model affidavit to be given by both the spouses for disclosing their source of income and other relevant details in matrimonial disputes and to decide the quantum of maintenance to be given by the husband.
The uniform format for deciding the maintenance is necessary to avoid the pendent lite (during litigation) maintenance and also to decide the amount of alimony in a hassle-free manner. This uniform pattern of the affidavit can be filed at any stage of the proceedings in all matrimonial cases.
The plea stated that filing the affidavit and disclosing the source of income will help in expeditiously solving and hearing the matter related to the matrimonial cases.