Order of maintenance of wife must start from the date of application! Rules Supreme Court of India.
The Supreme court of India while hearing a criminal appeal rose from an application for interim maintenance filed U/s 125 of Criminal procedure court by the wife and taking note of prevailing overlapping, jurisdiction and conflicting orders passed by different courts and to bring uniformity in the practice followed by the Family Courts/District Courts/Magistrate Courts throughout the country has passed following directions under Article 142 of Constitution of India:-
(i) If successive claims for maintenance are made by a party under different statutes, the Court would consider an adjustment or set- off, of the amount awarded in the previous proceeding/s, while determining whether any further amount is to be awarded in the subsequent proceeding;
(ii) Duty is cast upon the applicant to disclose the previous proceeding and the orders passed therein, in the subsequent proceeding;
(iii) If the order passed in the previous proceeding/s requires any modification or variation, it would be required to be done in the same proceeding.
(iv) For disposal of maintenance the Affidavit of Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities annexed as Enclosure I (For Non-Agrarian Deponents), Enclosure II (For Agrarian Deponents) and Enclosure III (For State of Maharashtra), as may be applicable, shall be filed by both parties in all maintenance proceedings, including pending proceedings before the concerned Family Court / District Court / Magistrates Court, as the case may be, throughout the country.
(v) For determining the quantum of maintenance payable to an applicant, the Court shall take into account factors like status of parties, reasonable needs of the wife and dependent children, whether the applicant is educated and professionally qualified; whether the applicant has any independent source of income, whether the income is sufficient to enable her to maintain the same standard of living s she was accustomed to in her matrimonial home, whether the applicant was working during the subsistence of the marriage, whether the wife was required to sacrifice her employment opportunities for nurturing the family, child rearing, and looking after adult members of the family, reasonable costs of litigation for non-working wife at the same time the financial capacity of husband, actual income, reasonable expenses for his own maintenance and dependent family members and other liability out to be considered and a careful and just balance must be drawn between all relevant factors. The factors are however not exhaustive, and the concerned Court may exercise its discretion to consider any other factor/s which may be necessary or of relevance in the facts and circumstances of a case.
(d) The maintenance in all cases will be awarded from the date of filing of the application for maintenance.
(e) Enforcement / Execution of orders of maintenance For enforcement / execution of orders of maintenance, it is directed that an order or decree of maintenance may be enforced under the respective provisions i.e Section 28A of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1956, Section 20(6) of the D.V. Act and Section 128 of Cr.P.C., as may be applicable. The order of maintenance may be enforced as a money decree of a civil court as per the provisions of the CPC.
