Ex-wives cannot demand lifestyle to match growing husband, says SC

Last update:December 23, 2024, 3:36 p.m. IST

The court reasoned that if the husband is doing better in life after separation, asking him to still retain the status of wife based on his own change in status would be a burden on his own personal progress.

Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra’s court was dealing with a review petition filed by a woman seeking an increase in the amount of maintenance awarded by the family court.

On December 19, the Supreme Court noted, on the issue of permanent alimony in matrimonial disputes, the tendency of parties to seek alimony or alimony as an equalization of wealth with the other party.

“The wife has the right to be maintained, as far as possible, in a manner similar to that to which she was accustomed in her marital home when the spouses were together. But once the parties have separated, the husband cannot be expected to maintain her in her present status throughout her life,” Justices BV Nagarathna and N Kotiswar Singh said.

The court also held that if the husband has progressed and is happily doing better in life after separation, then asking him to still retain the status of wife based on his own change in status would amount to imposing a burden on his life personal. progress.

“We ask whether the wife would be willing to seek equalization of wealth with her husband if, due to unfortunate events occurring after the separation, he became poor?,” the court asked.

She emphasized that there is no fixed formula for calculating the amount of alimony; rather, it should be based on a balanced consideration of various factors.

Among other things, the bench said that the duration of the marriage would also be a relevant factor to be considered while assessing the permanent alimony to be paid to the wife.

Apart from the issue of alimony, the court also urged women involved in marital disputes to exercise discretion, reminding them that strict legal provisions meant for their welfare should not be misused as tools for chastise, threaten, dominate or extort their husbands.

A court observed that the provisions of criminal law are aimed at the protection and empowerment of women, but are sometimes used by some women more for purposes for which they were never intended.

“In recent times, invocation of Sections 498A, 376, 377, 506 of the IPC as a combined package in most complaints relating to matrimonial disputes is a practice which has been condemned by this Court on several occasions. In some cases, the wife and her family tend to use a criminal complaint for all the serious offenses mentioned above as a negotiation platform and as a mechanism and tool to get the husband and his family to comply with their demands , which are mainly monetary. in nature,” the judge said.

The apex court made the observations while dealing with a matrimonial dispute in which the wife was seeking to transfer the cases filed by her husband, who, on his part, was seeking divorce on the ground of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

The parties in the case got married on July 31, 2021, after contacting each other on a matrimonial website. It was a second marriage for husband and wife. The husband was a citizen of the United States of America and worked in the information technology consulting services industry. The woman had a postgraduate degree in finance and had studied naturopathy and yoga sciences.

However, after a year, the parties filed lawsuits against each other. The wife also filed an FIR in Pune under sections 354, 376, 377 and 498A of the IPC, among others against the husband and his octogenarian father. The husband was arrested at the Mumbai International Airport on December 25, 2022 and was released on January 21, 2023, after almost a month in detention.

Before the apex court, the wife opposed the petition for dissolution of marriage and at the same time demanded a huge amount of money as alimony.

Regarding the issue of criminal proceedings between spouses and their impact on marital ties, the bench said that sometimes it is done in a fit of anger after a marital conflict, while sometimes it is a planned strategy in other cases. .

“Unfortunately, it is not just the parties who are involved in this abuse of the legal process. They are naturally fueled by the emotions of the situation. But other stakeholders also aggravate the situation as they can often devise cunning strategies to make women adopt such pressure tactics for their ulterior motives,” the bench said.

The bench further pointed out that police personnel are sometimes quick to intervene in selective cases and arrest the husband or even his relatives, including the husband’s elderly and bedridden parents and grandparents. Trial courts are reluctant to grant bail to the accused, influenced by the “seriousness of the offences” mentioned in the FIR.

“The collective effect of this chain of events is often overlooked by the actual individual actors involved, namely that even minor conflicts between husband and wife tend to escalate into prodigious battles of ego and reputation and washing dirty linen in public, ultimately leading to “The relationship has deteriorated to the extent that there remains no possibility of reconciliation or cohabitation,” the bench said.

In the present case, the court found that both parties had unfortunately failed to respect the marriage oath, which led to the conclusion that the marriage had completely failed. Apart from the irreconcilable nature of the relationship between the parties, in the present case another factor which weighed in favor of the exercise of the power under section 142(1) was that there was no child born out of wedlock and hence any direction allowing the parties to separate could only affect the parties themselves and not any innocent child, the bench said.

The court said: “If the elements of subsection (1) of section 13B of the HMA are established by both spouses, this must be construed as a case of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage to the extent that the parties to the marriage unison declare that there was an effective separation between them for a period of a year or more and they were unable to live together and they mutually agreed to dissolve the marriage.”

The bench emphasized that the court must be satisfied only on three key aspects: that the marriage was solemnized between the parties, that the averments contained in the petitions are true and that the consent was given freely by both the parties without any coercion or undue influence.

In the present case, the petitioner-wife had stated that the respondent-husband was a well-to-do man with a net worth of Rs 5,000 crore with several businesses and properties in the US and India and had paid at least his first female. Rs 500 crore upon separation, not including a house in Virginia, USA.

Thus, she claimed permanent alimony proportional to the status of the defendant husband and according to the same principles as that paid to the defendant’s first wife. The husband instead agreed to pay an amount between Rs 20 and 40 lakh as the parties hardly lived together for three to four months.

“We have serious reservations about the tendency of the parties to seek alimony or alimony as an equalization of wealth with the other party… But the petitioner wife in the present case has sought to equalize her status not only with the defendant husband, but also with his ex. -wife of the defendant. In our view, this cannot be an acceptable approach,” the bench said.

The bench noted that in the present case, the Pune Family Court had assessed the amount of permanent maintenance to which the petitioner could be entitled at Rs 10 crore. “We accept the said conclusion,” the court said.

He accordingly awarded the woman an additional amount of Rs 2 crore for purchasing another flat by ordering her to vacate two flats of her father-in-law in Pune and Bhopal which she was occupying.