KOCHI: A husband’s claim for maintenance from estranged wife shouldn’t be entertained by courts in normal course as it would promote lazy husbands living off the income earned by their wives, said the high court. The ruling by a division bench of the court was after considering a petition (OP-FC No. 26/2015) filed by a 24-year-old woman from Nellikunnu in Kasaragod, challenging a lower court’s order to pay maintenance of Rs 6,000 per month to her estranged husband, who is 36 years old, as he is jobless and suffering from hypertension.A family court can allow maintenance and litigation expenses to the wife or the husband while divorce proceedings are pending if either of them has no independent income, as per section 24 of the Hindu Marriage Act. Setting aside the family court’s order asking the wife to provide maintenance to the husband, the high court said in the judgment, “If such an attitude has been taken by the courts, then idleness of husbands will be promoted and they will be tempted not to do any work and depend on the wife for their livelihood, and such thing is not expected to be promoted in the society and that was not the intention of Section 24 of the act providing maintenance to either party to the proceedings.”The order further said, “It was intended to support only spouses who are incapable of maintaining himself/herself to get something for their sustenance and to conduct the litigation which they were forced to face from the other party to the proceedings who is capable of supporting the other spouse and nothing more.”While an order for paying maintenance to a husband is the exception, it was the opposite when it comes to a husband’s liability to pay maintenance to the wife, the court observed.“In the case of a wife filing an application for maintenance from the husband, unless he is able to establish that he is permanently disabled from getting any income, he cannot be exonerated from the payment,” the court noted.Insisting that the same principle has to be followed in a case where he is seeking maintenance from the wife, the judgment said a husband seeking maintenance from the wife can be treated only as an exceptional case. In normal circumstances, he has the liability or obligation to maintain the wife and vice versa is only exceptional.