Maintenance
to a Hindu wife is provided under Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Adoption and
Maintenance Act, Cr.P.C. etc. Under these legislations, there is no fixed limit
as to the quantum of maintenance. Under Cr.P.C., the limit of Rs.
1500/- was removed by the Central Amendment. Thus, currently, the magistrate or other
relevant judicial authority has the discretion to award proper and necessary
amount of maintenance as per the facts and circumstances of a case.
However,
to restrict the above discretion, Supreme Court has evolved the test of “status
of family” that “the wife should be in a position to maintain standard of living
that is neither luxurious nor penurious but what is consistent with status of a
family.”[1]
In this test various factors such as earning capacity of both the husband and
wife, current and prospective earnings of both husband and wife, number of children
and expenses incurred and to be incurred upon, etc. are taken into consideration.
Ironically,
the judiciary has disregarded the test when the working wife is claiming
maintenance. In such cases, the Court sees whether the working wife is able to earn
enough to live her life irrespective of the fact that she is not enjoying status
of family that she enjoyed with her husband. For example, recently, Delhi HC
rejected claim for maintenance by wife who earns 80,000/- per month, though
80,000/- is not sufficient to maintain her earlier strata.
In
the above observation, the question is not whether the earning wife should get
maintenance when her income is enough to live a life better than that of a
destitute. Rather the issue is about the trend of judiciary that what the
judiciary sets as ‘law’ has not been properly followed even by the judiciary
itself. Nonetheless, the trend is a significant step forward in dealings with short-term
marriages.
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