‘Husband’s unemployment no excuse to deny maintenance’

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has ruled that a husband cannot escape his duty to maintain his wife by claiming joblessness, observing that an able-bodied man is presumed capable of earning.

Justice Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee, while setting aside a Family Court order of June 2023 that had rejected a woman’s claim for support, directed her estranged husband to pay Rs 4,000 per month from the date she applied for maintenance in 2013.

The arrears are to be cleared in 12 equal monthly instalments by October 2026, and the wife may initiate execution if the order is not complied with. “The husband cannot take shelter behind voluntary unemployment or his own fault to avoid liability. An able-bodied young man is presumed capable of earning and cannot shirk responsibility by branding himself as a poor penniless person,” the judge observed.

The couple had married in August 2012 under the Special Marriage Act. The wife alleged that she was denied entry to her matrimonial home and forced to survive on her own modest salary of about Rs 12,000 a month, while her husband, who admitted to losing his job in 2014, belonged to a family of higher social and economic standing.

The Family Court had dismissed her plea in June 2023, reasoning that she had some earnings and her husband was unemployed and speculating that maintenance orders against jobless men often proved unenforceable.

The High Court rejected that reasoning as “perverse” and inconsistent with the object of Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Justice Mukherjee said maintenance was not intended to provide mere subsistence but to ensure a standard of living in line with the husband’s social status. “There is nothing on record to show that the wife is able to maintain the same lifestyle as her husband. Her meagre income cannot absolve him of his duty,” the court said.

The ruling restores the wife’s entitlement to support more than a decade after she first approached the courts and underscores that maintenance is a matter of social justice, not charity.