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What is maintenance to wife, and its history

As part of men's rights work, we almost daily keep hearing such statements and questions from freshly victimized men:

1. I won't give a single penny to her.

2. How much maintenance can be awarded?

3. What will happen if I don't pay maintenance?

Sometimes the reactions are confusing and all over the place. Being emotional and acting righteous will not help win the maintenance 'game'. Yes, it does seem highly unfair that not only we have to deal with a woman's false allegations but we have to pay money to her while dealing with false allegations! In western countries it is better for men in some ways but worse in other ways. A western woman can file for no-fault divorce, and not only gets to keep the home/car/children, but also husband has to pay her legal expenses if she has no income of her own! In US, the average cost of divorce runs into $50,000!

Why do we need to understand a bit of history and basic logic behind maintenance laws? For the simple reason that such knowledge can be quite useful to deny or reduce maintenance. Also, even though right now the regime in India is very favourable to women who ask for maintenance without proving any fault of husband, slowly but surely we have to incorporate the concepts from other countries to reform the maintenance and alimony laws in India too. Also, some of the factors of deciding maintenance discussed below can and should be used to argue against wife's maintenance.

Note that in US, the word for maintenance is alimony which means spousal support during separation/divorce/after divorce, and child support is meant specifically for the children and entirely different from the maintenance (if any) awarded to wife. From now on, we will use maintenance and alimony to mean the same thing.

Maintenance laws have probably originated since through most of history, a man was supposed to be the main breadwinner and one who worked outside the home; and the wife was primarily responsible for taking care of children and working the household. A man's labour (skilled or unskilled, leaving out the rich capitalists) used to earn him the income. Some of the man's income were to be used for running the house and it's quite natural that wife would have some claim over his earnings, so family/social norms and traditions came into being which supported that view.

So part of surplus labour of man was shared with the wife to take care of house and children. Now, all these things were fine till the time the married life and family was intact, but the question arises what happens when either the man or woman quits the relationship. There was the question of taking care of young children, and even if the couple didn't have children, the question could be raised since in many societies, women did not have property of their own after marriage. So how will such a woman take care of herself?

The laws of alimony or maintenance have arisen to take care of such situations. To understand the alimony laws, we have to understand the concept of with-fault versus no-fault divorce.

Traditionally, a fault divorce was the only means for a married couple to get divorced. It means that one of the spouses is at fault having committed one or more of: cruelty(mental, emotional, physical) , adultery, or deserted the other spouse for no good reason, impotence, among other grounds.

No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party. It became passed into family/divorce laws in various western nations in 1960s and 1970s.

One would imagine that the fault or no-fault of a husband should have an implication on the maintenance amount he can be asked to pay to wife. Unfortunately, things are not that straightforward.

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