Other wife, child no ground to disobey maintenance decree: Karnataka HC

The Karnataka High Court has said that a Muslim man hurriedly contracting another marriage after pronouncing talaq upon his first wife cannot be heard to say that he has to maintain the new spouse and the child begotten from her as a ground for not discharging the maintenance decree.

The court made this observation while coming to the rescue of a divorced woman who had secured a decree for her maintenance after years of struggle and has been relentlessly battling for its enforcement.

“He ought to have known his responsibility towards the ex-wife who does not have anything to fall back upon; the said responsibility arose from his own act of talaq and prior to espousing another woman; the responsibility & duty owed by a person to his ex-wife are not destroyed by his contracting another marriage,” Justice Krishna S Dixit said.

Nine years after the suit was filed, the family court had, in 2011, ordered the ex-husband to pay monthly maintenance of Rs 3,000. However, the ex-husband pleaded lack of means to pay and was also sent to civil prison in December 2012.

He was released in January 2013 on paying Rs 30,000. His subsequent application citing financial incapacity to pay was rejected and he approached the High Court.

The court, while rejecting the petition, also imposed a cost of Rs 25,000 on the ex-husband.

The bench requested the trial court to accomplish the execution on a war-footing and report compliance to the registrar general of the high court within three months.

The court said there is sufficient intrinsic material in the Holy Quran and Hadith, which lays foundation to the accrual of a corresponding right in favour of a divorced wife for maintenance.

“Generally, it is conditioned by three cumulative factors viz (i) mehr amount is insignificant; (ii) she is incapable of paddling her life boat on her own; & (iii) she has remained un-remarried,” the court said.

The court also observed that contentions such as the duty to furnish essentials to the ex-wife is coterminous with iddat period post talaq and that the quantum of maintenance amount cannot exceed the size of mehr money are difficult to sustain in ‘law in a changing society’.

“Divorce brings a trainload of difficulties to the women, is obvious; divorced women in general and divorced Muslim women in particular undergo a lot of hardship; the tears they shed are hidden in their veils; it is not that the unscrupulous men do not know all this,” Justice Dixit said.