Recent cases of suicides, including those of Puneet Khurana, a Delhi bakery owner, and Atul Subhash in Bengaluru, has refuelled the narrative that the family law system favours women over men. As per this narrative, marital laws are adjudicated to enable wives to drain their husband’s financial resources. This is far from the reality of the system where women face significant challenges in securing financial support from their husbands. We base our argument on an ongoing study of maintenance cases under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (HMA).
Maintenance in the HMA is codified under Section 24 (interim maintenance) and Section 25 (permanent alimony) to ensure financial support to the economically disadvantaged spouse during or after the main proceeding has concluded. While these provisions allow either of the spouses to seek maintenance, it is overwhelmingly women who do so as they are disproportionately dependent on marriage for financial security.
Women seek financial support in the form of subsistence and litigation expenses. They also seek maintenance for their children to manage childcare. Women care for both the home and children, yet courts expect them to cover all these expenses within the limited amounts awarded to them.
Women often seek maintenance as a reaction to husbands initiating divorce proceedings. Our analysis of cases under the HMA shows that 78 per cent of applications for spousal support are filed by women as part of divorce cases, with husbands initiating 76 per cent of these divorce proceedings.
Women seek financial support since the prospect of divorce weakens their access to family finances. This is evident in petitions filed for covering essential expenses during the pendency of the main proceeding, relying on their husbands for necessities like litigation costs, rent, food, water, and electricity to run the household. These amounts have increased over time with courts interpreting the objective of maintenance from merely preventing destitution to enabling women to maintain a lifestyle comparable to their marital life. Still, it is far from an equitable distribution of property.
Though both parties have access to legal remedies, husbands hold greater negotiating power due to their traditional economic advantage. They enjoy higher participation in the labour market where their work is recognised as productive. In contrast, women are saddled with household responsibilities not recognised as labour, also reducing their workforce participation.
As we will demonstrate below, the legal system does not disturb the advantage enjoyed by men. When women seek spousal support, their financial interests are often undermined, as they are typically granted paltry sums.
Our analysis suggests that courts reinforce gendered hierarchies when dispensing maintenance. The higher-earning spouse, typically a man, retains greater authority over property, with nearly all of it remaining in their possession by default.
Most aspects contributing to a person’s net worth are excluded from consideration, as courts calculate maintenance solely based on the husband’s personal income, excluding family savings, assets, and investments. In effect, women are not entitled to any property accumulated during marriage, leaving them entirely dependent on the husband’s income to rebuild their lives. Even within these limitations, husbands are typically required to part with as little as less than 10 per cent and, in some instances, up to 33 per cent of their income. As a result, men retain most of their income with women receiving only paltry sums as maintenance, rather than money they should be entitled to for having contributed to the household.
Consequently, women experience a significant decline in their financial status post-divorce. For example, in Gandhimathi v. Balasundharam (2022), the Madras High Court directed the wife to sustain herself and her minor son on Rs 30,000 annually, while her husband earned Rs 3,60,000 per year. This amount was expected to cover not only daily expenses but also significant costs such as housing, education, and medical needs.
Women are also disadvantaged throughout the process of securing maintenance. Husbands often employ tactics to evade paying maintenance, with courts frequently failing to obstruct these strategies. One of them is to intentionally delay filing income affidavits to prolong proceedings. Additionally, payments are often delayed, sometimes for up to six years, resulting in substantial arrears. Such delays, particularly in interim maintenance, defeat its purpose. Moreover, women are forced to initiate further legal action, such as execution proceedings, to secure what they owe.
Women often struggle to secure maintenance as husbands frequently provide incomplete or false financial information, sometimes downplaying their income by transferring assets to family members. Due to this, wives often gather evidence from their husband’s employers. It not only places an undue burden on them but also weakens their case if they lack a complete understanding of the husband’s finances.
In 2020, the Supreme Court addressed this issue in Rajnesh v. Neha by establishing a uniform procedure mandating parties to file an affidavit disclosing their income from sources like rent, shares, agriculture, and income tax returns. This was to ensure that the maintenance amount was decided on evidence rather than rough estimates.
Despite this direction, maintenance is still not determined through an objective assessment. Affidavits are inconsistently filed, and courts often overlook non-compliance. In 2023, the Supreme Court in Aditi alias Mithi v. Jitesh Sharma (2023) noted that lower courts still rely on guesswork to determine maintenance, neglecting to enforce the direction in Rajnesh v. Neha. As a result, courts effectively allow husbands to evade distributing even their salaries to their wives.
Our findings show that the narrative that men are victims of the family law system is far from the truth. Rather, the system reproduces gendered hierarchies by maintaining the husband’s economic dominance over his so-called dependents. Women experience a sharp decline in their standard of living after divorce since they receive only a fraction of their husband’s income. Moreover, securing maintenance is arduous, as husbands exploit loopholes in the system.
The writers are lawyers working at the Laws of Social Reproduction KCL, a project funded by the European Research Council
