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Earnings or Qualifications?

An often repeated statement by husbands who face maintenance cases is: "My wife works but I don't have any proof."

Well, how about collecting some?

To reduce or deny maintenance to wife, the single most important thing is proof of her income or working status. She may be a qualified PhD, but that won't matter much if she has never worked in her life.

I know my above statement would make some people indignant with righteous anger. "How can we allow such women to claim maintenance, when they have such qualifications?". Well, I couldn't agree more! My point is not about educational qualifications which are nothing more than certificates on paper, but income earning capacity.

I would say it's easier to deny maintenance if your wife is illiterate, but she owns a chaat-shop doing brisk business!

After going through the CrPC 125 and comments, it would be clear that the main thing a woman needs to justify to claim maintenance is "unable to maintain herself". What is easier to deny maintenance to: an illiterate woman running chaat-shop doing sales of Rs 50,000 per month, or to a jobless woman with PhD in a useless discipline which doesn't have much job potential? You can argue all you want why did she do a PhD in a discipline with no job-earning or teaching potential, but how does that matter to the judge whose job is to decide whether to give maintenance or not? If the judge doesn't know about the job potential of that PhD degree, you have to convince the judge by giving some evidence of earnings of people with that qualification. The routine manner in which interim maintenance orders get decided means that one has to be prepared to argue verbally in open court else the next chance will only be available when the trial starts for passing final orders. Usually women tend to abscond from the court especially when they get a high maintenance order.

Above examples may seem a bit exaggerated, but I made them to drive home a point.

It's not about qualifications, it's about earning and income.

How much income could your wife earn if she worked?

Nowadays, there is an advantage that lot of information is available on internet if one knows what to look for. I would suggest a novel approach to tackle with this pernicious problem of wives being allowed to get away sitting on their butts when they can easily find a job if they try.

1. Go to one of the job or career related sites, where sometimes they give information on how much a person with X years of experience can earn in a particular job description. I think glassdoor (link below) has such data for many jobs.

http://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salaries/index.htm

1. Try to find what kind of job description would fit your wife's qualifications. For example, if she's an MCA (Master of Computer Applications), then she could get a job as a software engineer. Type software engineer into the job description and try to find the salaries in various companies, various cities etc for the job of a software engineer.

2. Take screenshots of those web pages and submit to the court in your evidence or arguments at interim order stage, stating that your wife if she applied for a job will get on average a salary of XX,000 p.m, so in the interest of her qualifications and education not going waste, she should be encouraged to apply for such jobs and get employed.

I think the time has come to try above approach by husbands facing maintenance cases from qualified but non-working wives. I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be made to happen even for wives who have never worked so far. It's quite logical that a person who got education of 4-5 years after 10+2 should seek some employment, rather than sitting at home collecting maintenance from husband. That is the principle which needs to be brought into the maintenance regime.

Later, we discuss many judgments where maintenance has been denied to qualified non-working wives, but most of these are in cases where wife had worked at some point of time. Also, it will be much easier to deny or reduce maintenance in cases of somewhat professional qualifications like MBA, MBBS, LLB etc than somewhat more educational qualifications like MA, MSc etc. It's simply because it is still not considered unusual for many women in India to get a higher degree in education, but not do any work after marriage.

What kind of proofs to collect?

Best evidences to prove wife's income and working status are given below in order of their importance (in my opinion):

1. Income tax return (ITR): An income tax return is a document filed by a person stating his/her income, deductions, and tax liability. It is the best document possible to prove someone income since people usually will never ever state more income in it than they actually get, since they have to pay tax on whatever income they state in it. If they make a mistake and state more income, they end up paying more tax. So whether your wife is an HR executive, or running a coaching class for students, her income tax return is one document she will not be able to refute. For working people, their income tax is mostly based on Form-16 (TDS) declaration, so

2. Form 16 (TDS) declaration. This is given by employers to employees to attach with their ITR. It is an authoritative statement of one's salary since under-reporting the salary by a company to save on TDS can make them liable for prosecution by income tax department.

3. Latest or even old salary slip from employer.

4. Appointment letter. An appointment letter will have designation, some work description, salary, perks available to wife. The only problem with it is that wife may claim that she has left the job. Or it may be an old appointment letter stating salary at the time of joining rather than current salary. In either case, CrPC 91 can be used to ascertain details from company, and threat of perjury should also be used.

5. Statement of wife's account from EPF (employee provident fund) office. Some lucky (because they tried) have been able to get wife's name in list of employees, or even the monthly deduction of wife's EPF by filing RTI to employer (public sector). I know one person who got the list of EPF deductions of all the employees (including his wife's) in a company simply by asking for it in an RTI! Since deduction for EPF is a percentage of one's basic salary, a good estimate of basic salary can be made based on EPF amount.

6. A picture of her workplace with she doing the work. Based on my assessment from cases seen, many women who claim to be jobless are working as teachers, doing tuition/coaching of students at home, and some are self-employed doing work like tailoring, running beauty parlour etc. For many of these, it may be possible to collect photo or video evidence, especially if they are in the same city, and you know the address.

7. Bank statement showing regular salary deposits every month. A regular amount every month will easily raise the possibility of it being salary paid by employer than her father doing NEFT transfers to her. The description column of bank statement may also give clues as regards to the source of transfer, which you can use further to file CrPC 91 application should you need more proofs.

8. Bank statement showing other sources of income like rental income, interest on fixed deposits (FD) etc. Usually most women who file cases don't have any property of their own, but I mention it since many people tend to forget that income can include income from other sources than salary. In few cases, wife's father has many properties, so you can try to find if any of them are in his daughter's name which might be providing her with rental income.

9. Profile on Linkedin showing her working status, past employment history.

10. Profile on Facebook showing her pictures with her colleagues at office get-together, and such similar evidences.

11. Business card of wife showing her name, company name, designation etc. Now it is not difficult for someone to get a business card in another person's name printed if the printer is not very careful about checking whether you represent that person or company. So by itself, it is a weak proof unless she admits during cross-exam that it is her own business card. So this can be used to file CrPC 91 application to get her salary details from her company.

12. Any proof of her assets. For example If she drives a car, you can submit pictures of the car alleging that she bought it with her own funds. She will be put on the defensive trying to explain if she is the owner of the car, or the source of the funds used to purchase the car.

It's also very useful to network with other men in online Whatsapp forums (like on MRI site) and with other men at local city's weekly meetings. It's by such relations that sometimes people are able to get details of wife's job simply by finding someone else who works in same company, or someone who can get the proof from a source. But one shouldn't approach these forums with this being the sole objective. People would help others in the same boat provided they seem trustworthy, rather than those who seem to appear only to ask for a favour, and then disappear for few weeks or months till they need a new favour again!

What proofs to collect if you suspect wife of an affair?

We now come to an important part of fighting maintenance cases, should you have a strong suspicion that wife has a boyfriend. Unfortunately, for emotional or whatever reasons, this is messed up by husbands because of two reasons:

1. Even if they have evidence like photo of wife with a boyfriend, their lawyer will discourage them from showing it to the court. My guess is there is an unwritten rule being followed in matrimonial cases: "Don't show a woman in bad light". Which basically means that husbands have to face false allegations so wives can claim maintenance, but the one easy proof which can deny maintenance to wife should be kept under wraps. Does anyone get the logic behind this?

2. Husband himself has some psychological or emotional baggage which he has not dealt with. Maybe he wants to confront his wife and hopes for an apology or an admission of guilt by wife, which may even lead to a rapprochement. Maybe he feels inadequate that his wife found a 'better man' than him. Or maybe he is in a state of shock and feels cheated about how the events have conspired against him.

All that said, proof of wife's affair is a huge piece of evidence which can be used to show that it was she who was in the wrong and she has filed the false cases only to hide her own fault, and yet claim maintenance and other benefits given to a legal wife.

The proofs can be any one or more of the following:

1. Any emails, SMS, chat conversation of wife with boyfriend.

2. Item wise phone call records which show called number, date, duration of calls being placed from wife's phone to boyfriend's phone. It might be possible to get this from her phone company using CrPC 91 application to court too.

3. Any voice/video recording where wife admits to having a boyfriend.

4. Photo/video of wife with another person who is not apparently her colleague or relative, and the photograph shows a non-platonic relationship between the two.

Just a piece of caution, while I strongly suggest using allegation of affair if you have good evidence to back it up with, don't try to blindly make such an allegation hoping to get some advantage. Even if you don't have documentary evidence but you are aware of the affair, you can make the allegation, just don't make it if you know nothing of the kind happened.

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