The Supreme Court has laid down uniform and comprehensive guidelines for family courts, magistrates and lower courts to follow while hearing the applications filed by women seeking maintenance from their estranged husbands’.
Why such a judgement?
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Usually, maintenance cases have to be settled in 60 days, but they take years, in reality, owing to legal loopholes.
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Women deserted by husbands are left in dire straits, often reduced to destitution, for lack of means to sustain themselves and their children.
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Despite a plethora of maintenance laws, women were left empty-handed for years, struggling to make ends meet after a bad marriage.
What did the Court say?
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The Supreme Court has held that deserted wives and children are entitled to alimony/maintenance from the husbands from the date they apply for it in a court of law.
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Violation of judicial orders for grant of maintenance would lead to punishments such as civil detention and even attachment of the property of the latter.
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The plea of the husband that he does not possess any source of income does not absolve him of his moral duty to maintain his wife, if he is able-bodied and has educational qualifications.
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Both the applicant wife and the respondent-husband have to disclose their assets and liabilities in a maintenance case.
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Other factors such as “spiralling inflation rates and high costs of living” should be considered, but the wife should receive alimony which fit the standard of life she was used to in the matrimonial home.
Covering expenses
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The expenses of the children, including their education, basic needs and other vocational activities, should be factored in by courts while calculating the alimony.
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Education expenses of the children must be normally borne by the father. If the wife is working and earning sufficiently, the expenses may be shared proportionately between the parties.
Permanent alimony
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Permanent alimony not justified
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Duration of marriage should be accounted for while determining the permanent alimony.