Women Sacrifice Careers for Family, Can’t Be Punished for It Later: Allahabad HC on Maintenance

Holding that a wife’s educational qualifications or alleged earning capacity cannot, by themselves, be grounds to deny maintenance, the Allahabad High Court recently set aside a family court order which refused maintenance to a wife on the assumption that she was capable of sustaining herself.

The bench of Justice Garima Prashad ruled that neither potential earning capacity nor unproven claims of employment can absolve a husband of his statutory duty to maintain his wife under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

"It is a matter of social reality that women devote themselves to domestic responsibilities and take care of children and are unable to be gainfully employed. It is, therefore, misplaced for a husband to rely solely on the qualification of his wife to evade his legal obligation to maintain her. When a marital discord arises and parties get separated, then the very sacrifice is often portrayed as a devilish act intended to extract money from the husband. Such sweeping assumptions are not only unfair but deeply insensitive to the social and emotional realities that women face," court said.

The high court held that the family court had “totally misconstrued” the evidence on record by concluding that the wife was capable of maintaining herself merely because she was educated and had some vocational training. It noted that there was no specific finding or material evidence to show that the wife was gainfully employed or earning any definite income. The mere fact that a woman could work or had the capacity to earn, court said, was not sufficient to deny maintenance.

Court observed that women often devote years to domestic responsibilities and child care, which makes re-entry into the workforce difficult despite educational qualifications. It described the husband’s reliance on the wife’s qualifications as a misplaced attempt to evade legal responsibility and cautioned against treating a woman’s sacrifices within marriage as a basis to deprive her of financial support after separation.

The case related to a marriage solemnised in May 2006, from which a son was born who is now an adolescent. The wife alleged that she was subjected to physical and mental cruelty and was forced to leave the matrimonial home along with her child. She stated that she had no independent source of income and was living at her parental home, while the husband was employed as a Class-IV employee in a government primary school.

Before the family court, the husband claimed that the wife was working as a teacher and earning independently, and also denied the paternity of the minor child. While the family court rejected the denial of paternity, it accepted the husband’s plea that the wife had concealed her qualifications and was living separately without sufficient cause, thereby denying her maintenance.

Disagreeing with this approach, the high court held that refusal to resume cohabitation, even after proceedings for restitution of conjugal rights, could not automatically disqualify a wife from claiming maintenance. It further ruled that the absence of criminal complaints alleging cruelty or dowry demand could not be used to infer that the wife was living separately by choice.

Court was also critical of the husband’s conduct in denying fatherhood of the child, describing it as an attempt to evade maintenance obligations. It held that such conduct compounded the hardship faced by the wife and child.

On the issue of quantum, the high court found the maintenance of Rs. 3,000 per month awarded to the adolescent child to be “meagre,” particularly in light of the husband’s admitted gross salary of over Rs. 48,000 per month. It held that excessive deductions permitted by the family court had resulted in an artificially reduced assessment of the husband’s paying capacity.

Emphasising that Section 125 CrPC is a measure of social justice, the court said maintenance must ensure dignity and not mere survival. Accordingly, the impugned order was set aside and the matter remanded to the family court for fresh determination of maintenance payable to both the wife and the minor son. Court asked the family court to pass a reasoned order within one month.

Case Title: Smt. Suman Verma and another vs. State of U.P. and another

Order Date: January 8, 2026

Bench: Justice Garima Prashad