Hi Ipshita,

A person has the right to utilize his hard earned money the way he/she wants. In this case, your father is right in asserting that he will utilize his money as per his wish.

Your mother, being a wife, has the right of maintenance. As a husband, your father is under an obligation to maintain your mother in terms of providing her food, shelter and clothing and other facilities as per the standard of living that your mother has been used to after marriage.

As long as your father is fulfilling his duties as a husband towards your mother and the retirement benefits are the hard earned money of your father, he will have complete control over it. Even if he wants to give it away in charity, you cannot question it.

Had this money been ancestral property, the situation would have been different.

Actually, not sure how this works legally and if there is any construction that will allow this, but surely fairness would make it seem that a wife has as much claim to her husband’s earned (let’s keep “hard” out of it for the sake of objectivity) money as the husband, so long as they are married.

In a matrimonial home, shouldn’t she be presumed to have made tangible sacrifices that facilitated the husband in earning that money, and the burden of proving to the contrary should be on the husband? I mean for an average metropolitan Indian household, she surely took a backseat in her career to devote time to the children and have a physically and emotionally healthy family, or supported her husband in other ways, or something else.

Isn’t some sort of security to a wife (No, basic maintenance at the level she is used to is not sufficient security in an “equal” partnership such as a marriage) one of the very foundations of the matrimonial bond?

Take a practical example. An educated, talented middle class woman in a city such as Delhi or Bombay marries a man of similar intellectual, professional and financial level. She soon has babies and likely takes a backseat in her career to care for the home. Even if she continues with her job, not doing it at a supremely competitive pace wouldn’t earn her the kind of living that her husband is able to by not being the one to take the backseat. Her husband would be able to buy properties, she likely wouldn’t.

Should she then live in the fear that if on he 25th year of marriage she or her husband were compelled to get a divorce, she might be left out on the road? You would agree that practically, maintaining a woman at the level she is used to is a lot different from her having actual assets to back her in life, retirement etc. There is financial freedom in one, and not in the other.

Some legal construct around this ought to be worked out!

Dear Prachi,

On the same logic, should a woman share the debts of a husband when he wastes the money on useless pursuits (gambles it away for lack of a better example)?

Yes actually by that very logic.

If a husband’s resources should flow equally to the wife and dependants, a husband should also be not left to bear the burden of misfortune by himself even if it was due to his own silly decision.

BUT, just like I said that is until the presumption of mutual sacrifice and inter-linkage is not disturbed by either spouse discharging their burden to prove the contrary.

Take your instance of gambling, since it is illegal in India, the persons who won against the husband would as it is not have legal recourse for recovery against the wife. But surely if the couple has to go live in a smaller home due to lack of money (wasted away in gambling), the wife cannot turn the husband out of that home yes? or just force him to use a smaller rat-hole of space in that home and keep the rest for herself?

‘Left on the road’ sounds a bit dramatic considering the concept of maintaining a wife as per her status in society.

Whatever you have pointed out in your first post, Prachi, is envisaged by the concept of maintenance under the criminal procedure code. How it comes to the aid of a woman is dependent entirely on how empathic a judge is to her needs and his perception of money.

Thank you your reply, but allow me to state a practical example of “left on the road”.

Considering the random example of a middle class professional woman living with her salary earning husband for the last 30 years, having her own job, as well as two kids in college. They live in a posh apartment in Mumbai. But the apartment is in the husband’s name, as are two other house properties which he brought with his earned money.

He had an affair this year and the wife can’t stand not divorcing him after this event. The college-going kids move with her. The wife was mostly focusing on home and kids therefore the job she is left with is, say, one as a lecturer at a college.

Now if after the divorce the husband were to maintain her and the kids in another rented apartment of similar standard as the self-owned apartment they were living in earlier, air-conditioned, with a car, provisions to pay off grocery bills etc., but not at par with his own status - re owner of three house properties in a metropolitan cities (and with all the accompanying financial freedom), is the same thing as having backing-assets giving one the freedom to decide, say, which college the kids go to for post-graduation, or where she goes for a holiday?

Is the practice of judges awarding that kind of a lump sum the norm, or is rare? And is it okay to leave it to luck (re the judge’s discretion)? Wouldn’t that cause wives to live under the looming fear of being “left out on the road”?

Or even if she does not get divorced, does her marriage give her an equal status in the household if she does not have a say on the manner of utilisation of money in the family’s bank?