Spouse with earning capacity can’t saddle partner with expenses: HC

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has observed that a spouse who has a reasonable capacity to earn but chooses to remain unemployed and idle without sufficient explanation should not be permitted to saddle the other partner with the one-sided responsibility of meeting expenses by providing maintenance.

The court made the observation while reducing the monthly maintenance from Rs 30,000 to Rs 21,000 to be paid by a man to his estranged wife under the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA).

It said the woman claimed to have no independent source of income but has a reasonable educational background being a graduate from Delhi University. “She appears to have voluntarily undertaken social work despite there being no impediment to undertaking meaningful employment.

“The spouse having a reasonable capacity of earning but who chooses to remain unemployed and idle without any sufficient explanation or indicating sincere efforts to gain employment should not be permitted to saddle the other party with one-sided responsibility of meeting out the expenses,” a bench of justices V Kameswar Rao and Anoop Kumar Mendiratta said.

The bench said the maintenance does not have to be provided with mathematical precision but to give relief to the spouse who is unable to maintain and support during the pendency of proceedings and to ensure that the party should not suffer due to paucity of source of income.

It said the provision for maintenance under the HMA is gender neutral and sections 24 and 25 of the Act provide for the rights, liabilities and obligations arising from marriage between the parties.