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List investments and expenses to show reduced in-hand income

One of the common techniques to save on maintenance is to reduce one's in-hand income by showing more expenses. Of course, the expenses have to be of useful rather than wasteful nature, and it is better if the spending is towards creating an asset like a house, or investments for pension, old age security etc.

Many people have only a vague idea of their actual expenses per month, and so they would tend to underestimate their household and personal expenses every month.

So the first exercise is to sit down and list down the following monthly expenses:

Regular monthly expenses

1. Basic living expenses on food, groceries, milk, clothing

2. Rent paid on house if living in rented place, else EMI of house. If living in self-owned house/flat, this expense becomes zero. Add to these maintenance amount to apartment complex every month if living in a housing society/apartment.

3. Money spent on petrol and/or public commute whether for official or personal work

4. Utilities bills: electricity, water etc

5. Other subscription or services based expenses like electricity bill, TV subscription, newspaper, broadband internet, mobile, 3G, and so on.

6. Household expenses like gas bill, maintenance amount spent on fixing things like plumbing, electricity, painting the house etc.

7. Any profession related expenses like some professional subscriptions etc

8. In case your parents or siblings are dependent on you, include those expenses as part of above, or list anything separately for their personal expenses. We will discuss later advanced technique of dependent parents filing CrPC 125 case on you so your expenses get reduced by the ordered maintenance amount.

Add all of above to arrive at a figure of regular total monthly expenses

Regular monthly deductions from salary

1. Credit to EPF(employee provident fund) made by employer.

Regular yearly or one-time in an year expenses

1. Premium towards LIC insurance policies

2. Annual maintenance of the house, or such one time expenses.

3. Any one time expenses incurred during the previous year, for example, for some necessary repairs or renovation done in the house

4. Insurance premium on vehicles owned: whether 2-wheeler or car.'

5. Insurance premium on mediclaim/hospitalization insurance.

6. Any donations you make regularly to some charity, NGO etc every year

7. Money spent on your own personal things like clothes, basic entertainment etc. Also list down similar expenses you make for dependent parents or siblings.

8. If you have responsibility of education of a younger sibling etc or contributing to household expenditure in an joint family, make sure it is covered in one of the items above, or else list it down separately.

Take a sum of the yearly expenses above and divide by 12 to arrive at a typical per month figure of the yearly expenses. Now add this total to regular total monthly expenses and monthly deductions from salary calculated before, which now gives the approximate outgo from your income every month.

Now what we need to do is to increase this outgo in a judicious manner so that the in-hand income is reduced, while any assets or investments that are being built will still be out of reach of wife. Below are some ideas.

Investment oriented expenses

One can do investments from funds one intends to save, and put them into long term investments which cannot be touched by wife, thereby reducing the liquid bank balance or fixed deposits kind of savings, which have some possibility of wife laying a claim on them

1. Increase deduction towards EPF and such available investment opportunities.

2. If you are risk averse and don't mind doing long term locked investments, it will be good to invest more or up to maximum tax exemption limit in avenues like PPF (public provident fund) which amount is supposed to be locked for 15 years. Such investments are made for one's own old age security or for children's benefits, and so wife will not be able to lay a claim on them.

3. If you do not have any life insurance policy taken so far, you can choose to take up term life insurance which is pure life insurance and hence low premium, or take a more expensive endowment policy which is investment and pension oriented. Make sure to make someone else than wife as the nominee in policy. Just like EPF and PPF, these things cannot be touched by anyone else.

Non-investment oriented expenses

1. Take mediclaim/hospitalization insurance policy if you don't have one already.

2. You may want to start or increase the amount of donations to some charity or NGO. Note: Let it be your wife's or society's problem to prove why wife's needs are more important than your need to do your bit for social causes close to your heart.

In next section, we discuss about how dependent parents can also file CrPC 125 on you, so as to further reduce your in-hand income.

Get parents to file CrPC 125 maintenance case on you

Let's now discuss a provision of the overall evil CrPC 125 which can be used as a way to save on maintenance to wife. Let's see below once again the first few sub-sections of CrPC 125:

The heading of CrPC 125 and clause 125(1)(d) clearly allow it to be used by parents to file maintenance application on their son if they are unable to maintain themselves. That can become an effective way to reduce your in-hand income since you have to pay the ordered maintenance to parents every month!

The only necessary condition is that parents should have no regular pension or sufficient income from interest on fixed deposits/investments, rental income, and the like. To the extent that they may have some income from these sources, they can still file a CrPC 125 application on you to claim the remaining amount required for their sustenance.

For example, if your father and mother need Rs 15,000 per month for their needs, but they only have income of Rs 4,000 per month, they can file a CrPC 125 application to ask for Rs 11,000 from you. Of course, we are assuming here that you have somehow morphed from a "Shravan Kumar" into a neglecting/evil son overnight after the wife filed a maintenance case on you!

Can parents file a CrPC 125 on you if all of you are staying in the same house? I bet they can. I also know one person who is living proof of that. The law does not say whether the son and parents to be living separately or not. It's not the case like wife has filed a divorce, so she must not be living in husband's house anymore after filing divorce. The CrPC 125 merely says that if a son is neglecting or refuses to maintain parents, they have a right to claim maintenance from son. Neglect is still possible even after people are living under the same roof!

Let's take a few scenarios about what items can be includes as parents' expenses depending on their and your housing arrangement.

1. You stay in same house with parents, and the house belongs to parents. In this case, parents can ask for living expenses from son. Some people may say that husband can pay rent to parents for living in same house, however to me it seems a bit fishy from social point of view. More importantly, purely from arithmetical point of view, your rent paid to them will reduce your in-hand income but it will increase their income. So they will not be able to claim that much from you in their CrPC 125 application, with the likely net effect on your in-hand income being the same after their CrPC 125 maintenance amount is decided.

2. You stay in same house with parents, and the house is in your name alone. In this case, parents can again claim living expenses from son.

3. You stay in different house from parents' house, and their house is self-owned. In this case, parents can again claim living expenses from son.

4. You stay in different house from parents' house, and you pay rent for their house. Your rent payment towards parents' residence should be declared as a necessary expense in your response to CrPC 125 by wife, as already noted earlier.

5. You stay in different house from parents' house, and they pay rent for their house. Your parents can add the house rent amount to the total amount asked for in CrPC 125 application. A question may indeed arise in mind of judge that how are parents able to pay the rent of house every month if they have no means? The appropriate response should be that it is coming from their savings for old-age etc (no need to declare all those savings' details in their application), and they cannot be compelled to exhaust their savings especially when their son has turned into a neglecting/evil son! They would need those savings for future security, health check-up etc since they cannot depend upon the son to do the same for them.

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