Employed wife also entitled to maintenance: HC

Employed wife also entitled to maintenance: HC 

Abhinav.Garg@timesofindia.com  12.09.2025

New Delhi : Noting that a highly qualified, gainfully employed wife is also entitled to maintenance if she enjoyed a better standard of life in the matrimonial home, Delhi HC has enhanced the monthly maintenance from Rs 35,000 fixed by the family court for the estranged couple’s child to Rs 1.5 lakh for the wife and the child. “Her financial self-sufficiency must be assessed not in absolute terms but relative to the standard of living maintained during the marriage... maintenance must be calibrated in a manner that allows both parties, especially the financially weaker spouse, to live with dignity, particularly when the respondent (husband’s) income is almost 10-fold,” a bench of justices Navin Chawla and Renu Bhatnagar observed in a verdict Wednesday. 

The wife is a DU assistant professor earning over Rs 1.2 lakh per month while her husband is a senior data scientist with an MNC drawing an annual income exceeding Rs 1 crore, with benefits like RSUs, stock options and international travel allowances, HC noted. “Despite her employment, her income doesn’t sufficiently meet the demands of sustaining the standard of living she and the child were accustomed to prior to the separation. 

It is evident while the appellant earns an income, it is not comparable to the scale and diversity of the respondent’s earnings,” the bench said. Faulting the family court for focusing only on the wife’s qualification and employment, HC noted though she is earning, “her income is insufficient to support her own needs and those of the minor child”. “She is residing with her parents, which cannot continue indefinitely, and her limited earnings compel her to remain dependent on them. With such resources, she is unable to maintain a reasonable standard of living,” it said, adding the husband’s “substantially higher income makes him financially capable of providing adequate maintenance”.