The Allahabad High Court has ruled that parental support for a distressed wife does not absolve her husband of his duty to pay maintenance.

The family court, by its order passed in December 2023, had rejected the wife’s claim for maintenance entirely while awarding ₹3,000 per month as maintenance to each child.

It was alleged that her husband, the second opposite party in the petition, is a retired army personnel who stopped maintaining marital relations with her and later informed her that he had married another woman.

She alleged that in January 2020, she was assaulted and expelled from the matrimonial home along with the children.




Against her plea, the husband pleaded that the wife had left the matrimonial home without sufficient cause and that she was allegedly maintaining illicit relations with certain persons.

He further stated that during his service in the Army, ₹11,303 was deducted every month from his salary and paid to his wife and children until his retirement in November 2020.

He claimed that after his retirement, he receives a pension of about ₹21,025 per month and has no other source of income.

After hearing the arguments of both parties, the family court disbelieved the wife’s case on the ground that she could not prove specific incidents of dowry demand, assault or second marriage.




The court also found fault with the Family Court’s award of ₹3,000 per child per month and termed it “wholly inadequate, unrealistic”.

Thus, modifying the family court’s order, the high court, in the judgment dated June 17, directed the husband to pay a monthly maintenance of ₹5,000 to the wife. It also enhanced the maintenance amount for the two minor children to ₹4,000 each.

She then moved high court.

Allowing the criminal revision petition filed by the wife and her two minor children, Justice Garima Prashad observed that a wife cannot be denied maintenance from her husband under section 125 CrPC, merely because her parents support her financially during times of distress.