SC: Husband can’t say ‘no income’ to avoid payment

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, April 6

The Supreme Court today ruled that the man could not avoid payment of maintenance to separated or divorced wife pleading that he had no income.

“Sometimes, a plea is advanced by the husband that he does not have the means to pay, for he does not have a job or his business is not doing well. These are only bad excuses and, in fact, they have no acceptability in law.

“If the husband is healthy, able-bodied and is in a position to support himself, he is under the legal obligation to support his wife, for wife’s right to receive maintenance under Section 125 CrPC, unless disqualified, is an absolute right,” a Bench comprising Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant held.

The apex court delivered the judgment while raising the monthly maintenance to Rs 4,000 to be paid by a retired army jawan (Nayak), a Muslim, to his divorced wife. The Allahabad High Court had reduced the amount to Rs 2,500, observing that he had retired and the family court had decided it at Rs 4,000 when he was in service, drawing a salary of Rs 17,654.

The couple had married in April 1992 and divorced in June 1997. Shamima Farooqui had filed for maintenance in 1998, but the family court decided it only in 2012.

“It is shocking to note that there was no order for grant of interim maintenance...To say the least, it is unacceptable. It is in fact a distressing phenomenon,” the SC said.

Pleas for maintenance should be disposed of at the earliest by family courts by adopting a pro-active approach so that people would have faith in family courts, it held.

Further, the Bench noted that Shahid Khan had deliberately taken voluntary retirement after the order for maintenance was passed “with the purpose of escaping the liability to pay.”

Women should be able to say “that they are the persons of modern age and they have the ideas of today’s Bharat. Any other idea floated or any song sung in the invocation of male chauvinism is the proposition of an alien, a total stranger...that is the truth in essentiality,” Justice Misra held while authoring the verdict for the Bench.