Kamal Ghorui
PRAYAGRAJ: The Allahabad high court has observed that a husband’s obligation to maintain his wife continues even after his death and the widow can claim maintenance from her father-in-law.Dismissing an appeal filed by a Rampur resident, Akul Rastogi, a division bench comprising Justice Arindam Sinha and Justice Satya Veer Singh observed in its Mar 17 order, “it is well settled that a husband is obliged to maintain his wife. This position has emanated from situations where the spouses have separated and the wife has sought maintenance, either on the criminal side or under maintenance provisions in Hindu law. However, this obligation of the man to maintain the wife attaches even after his death as the law allows the widow to claim maintenance from her father-in-law.”As per Section 19 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, a widowed daughter-in-law can claim maintenance from her father-in-law to the extent that she is unable to maintain herself out of her own earnings or from her property. It says that the woman can only approach her father-in-law if she is unable to obtain maintenance from the estate of her deceased husband, the estate of her own parents, or from her children and their estates, says a legal expert.The maintenance obligation becomes unenforceable if the father-in-law lacks the means to pay it from coparcenary or ancestral property in his possession, particularly property from which the daughter-in-law has not already obtained a share. Importantly, such an obligation ceases on the remarriage of the daughter-in-law. In addition to it, Section 21 (viii) of the Act provides a scope to the woman who becomes a widow before or after the death of her father-in-law to claim maintenance from his estate as long as she doesn’t remarry, he adds.
