House rent recovery, provident fund contributions, furniture recovery and so on are not to be deducted from the amount a husband pays to his wife or daughter for maintenance. The Karnataka High Court ruled that no husband can opt to have any “artificial” deduction made from his salary just so that he can pay a lesser amount to his wife in maintenance.
According to Justice Hanchate Sanjeevkumar, legit deductions are only those made towards income tax and professional tax. These are the compulsory deductions that can be made. However, provident fund contributions, house rent recovery, furniture recovery, and similar amounts cannot be called legitimate deductions, and therefore, cannot be cut from the maintenance amount paid to an ex-wife or daughter.
The petition was filed by a manager of the State Bank of India who challenged the family court’s order that granted maintenance of Rs.15,000 to his wife and Rs.10,000 to his daughter under section 125 CrPC.
His argument was that even though his salary is almost a lakh per month, his take-home pay wasn’t very high owing to the various amounts deducted. Therefore, it was difficult for him to pay the very high maintenance to his wife. The Court, however, observed that the deductions made from the man’s salary, towards provident fund, furniture recovery, house rent recovery, festival advance, LIC premium or loans that the husband himself has taken, bring benefit only to him. Therefore, these deductions cannot and should not affect the maintenance amount payable to the wife and child, as reported by Live Law.
The Court rejected his petition saying a ruling in his favour will only encourage other men to cook up artificial deductions in an endeavour to reduce the payment to their former wives.
