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For awarding maintenance from the date of the application, express order is necessary.

For awarding maintenance from the date of the application, express order is necessary.

Shail Kumari Devi & Anr vs Krishan Bhagwan Pathak @ Kishun B Pathak

Supreme Court

28/07/2008

CIVIL APPEAL NO. 4666 OF 2008 ARISING OUT OF SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION (CIVIL) NO.17260 OF 2007

About/from the judgment:

Maintenance is a right which accrues to a wife against her husband the minute the former gets married to the latter. It is not only a moral obligation but is also a legal duty cast upon the husband to maintain his wife. Hence, whenever a wife does not stay with her husband and claims maintenance, the only question which the Court is called upon toconsider is whether she was justified to live separately from her husband and still claim maintenance from him? If the reply is in the affirmative, she is entitled to claim maintenance. It is, therefore, open to the Magistrate to award maintenance from the date of application and there is nothing which requires recording of ‘special reasons’ though he must record reasons as envisaged by subsection (6) of Section 354 of the Code in support of the order passed by him.

 

We, therefore, hold that while deciding an application under Section 125 of the code, a Magistrate is required to record reasons for granting or refusing to grant maintenance to wives, children or parents. Such maintenance can be awarded from the date of the order, or, if so ordered, from the date of the application for maintenance, as the case may be. For awarding maintenance from the date of the application, express order is necessary. No special reasons, however, are required to be recorded by the Court. In our Judgment, no such requirement can be read in sub section (l) of Section 125 of the Code in absence of express provision to that effect.

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