Man can’t be expected to maintain ex-wife as per present status all life: SC

The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday rejected a woman’s request for Rs 500 crore as alimony from her ex-husband, ruling that a man cannot be expected to maintain his former wife for life according to his present status. The woman claimed her husband, who has assets worth Rs 5,000 crore in the US, had paid Rs 500 crore in alimony to his first wife, and she sought the same amount based on this claim.

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Burden on progress

If the husband has moved ahead and is fortunately doing better in life post his separation, then to ask him to always maintain the status of the wife as per his own changing status would be putting a burden on his own personal progress. Supreme Court

However, a Bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Pankaj Mithal awarded her a permanent alimony of Rs 12 crore, to be paid within a month, along with Rs 3 lakh towards litigation costs. The Court also asked her to vacate two flats owned by her former husband in Pune and Bhopal within two months of receiving the alimony. She was ordered to file an undertaking within two weeks confirming compliance. In its judgment, the Bench emphasised that while a wife was entitled to be maintained in a manner similar to her status during the marriage, it could not be expected that the husband would support her indefinitely according to his current financial status after separation.

Writing the judgment for the Bench, Justice Nagarathna said, “If the husband has moved ahead and is fortunately doing better in life post his separation, then to ask him to always maintain the status of the wife as per his own changing status would be putting a burden on his own personal progress. We wonder, would the wife be willing to seek an equalisation of wealth with the husband if due to some unfortunate events post-separation, he has been rendered a pauper?”

Using its powers under Article 142(1) of the Constitution, the SC dissolved the couple’s marriage on the grounds of an irretrievable breakdown and quashed all criminal cases between them. Rejecting the woman’s claim for parity with her husband’s first wife, the Court said, “The petitioner cannot simply demand an amount equal to what the respondent’s first wife received or base her claim solely on the husband’s income.” It further explained that alimony must be determined based on various factors, including the wife’s income, her reasonable needs and her residential rights, rather than the husband’s financial circumstances or payments made to his first wife.