Supreme Court says divorcee can seek maintenance only from husband or in special cases, father-in-law



NEW DELHI: A woman cannot seek maintenance allowance from her mother-in-law as such a liability is fixed only upon the husband, and in exceptional circumstances, on the father-in-law, the Supreme Court (SC) has ruled.



“A property in the name of the mother-in-law can neither be a subject matter of attachment nor in the life time of the husband, his personal liability to maintain his wife can be directed to be enforced against such a property,” the court said.

A bench of justices SB Sinha and VS Sirpurkar quashed the orders of a Gujarat magistrate who had ordered auctioning of the properties of Vimlaben Ajitbhai Patel for paying maintenance allowance to her daughter-in-law Sonalben Rameshchandra Desai.

Sonalben, after a discord with husband Jitendra Ajitbhai Patel in 1993, had filed a number of criminal cases against him and his parents.

Though a magistrate, while granting bail in one of the cases, had restrained Jitendra and his parents from leaving the country, the trio left for the US for medical treatment of his father Ajitbhai Revandas Patel.

On an application moved by Sonalben, the magistrate declared Jitendra and his parents “proclaimed offenders”. Their property was attached under section 85 of the CrPC and auctioned by the authorities on court orders.

The magistrate ruled that from the amount recovered through the auctioning, Sonalben be paid her maintenance allowance.



Vimlaben’s plea that she was the sole owner of the property and was not under any obligation to pay maintenance allowance to her estranged daughter-in-law was rejected. The Gujarat high court upheld the auction, following which the aggrieved family appealed to the apex court.

Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court observed, “Sonalben might be entitled to maintenance from her husband. An order of maintenance might have been passed but in view of the settled legal position, the decree, if any, must be executed against her husband and only his properties could be attached therefore, not of her mother-in law.

“If the widowed daughter-in-law is a destitute and has no earnings of her own or other property and if she has nothing to fall back on for maintenance on the estate of her husband or father or mother or from the estate of her son or daughter, if any, then she can fall back upon the estate of her father-in-law,” the apex court ruled.”