On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court said that getting married another time and having children from that marriage cannot be a reason for a Muslim man to resist the execution of maintenance decree obtained by his former wife from a court of law.
Giving relief to a divorced woman who had fought a legal battle on maintenance for 2 decades, the Court said “a Muslim man hurriedly contracting another marriage after pronouncing talaq upon his first wife cannot be heard to say he has to maintain the new spouse and child and thus cannot discharge the maintenance decree”.
“He ought to have known his responsibility towards the former wife who does not have anything to fall back upon. The said responsibility arose from his own act of talaq...,” observed Justice Krishna S. Dixit while dismissing, with a cost of ₹25,000, a plea filed in 2015 by Ezazur Rehman of Bengaluru.
Ezazur Rehman had challenged the 2011 decree of a Civil Court ordering him to pay RS 3,000 monthly maintenance to his former wife, Saira Banu, whom he had divorced by way of talaq within 8 months of marriage way back in 1991. He was put in civil prison in 2012 for non-payment of maintenance and he moved to the HC in 2014 after the Civil Court rejected his contentions of financial incapacity to pay maintenance.
Mahr and Iddat
On the petitioner’s allegation that the maintenance amount can't exceed the quantum of mahr and has to be restricted to iddat period of 3 months post-talaq, the Court said it was difficult to sustain such contentions in law in the changing society in view of the interpretation of laws on maintenance of divorced Muslim women by the Supreme Court. Iddat refers to the period a woman must observe after the death of her husband or after divorce, while mahr is the obligation paid by the groom to the bride at the time of Islamic marriage.
Mr Rehman had alleged he wasn't liable to pay anything beyond the ₹5,000 paid as mahr and the ₹900 paid as maintenance for 3 months in 1991.
The Court said that “It is a case of a hapless divorced woman who has secured a decree for her maintenance after years of struggle; she is relentlessly battling for its enforcement. It is a case involving the jural correlatives resting on the shoulders of ex-spouses by virtue of talaq".
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