NEW DELHI: The Delhi HC has stressed that a homemaker’s labour helps the earning spouse function effectively and it was “unjust” to disregard her contributions while deciding maintenance by equating her joblessness with idleness.
Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, while deciding on a maintenance application, observed that though women who can and are willing to work should be encouraged, “the denial of maintenance on the sole grounds that she is capable of earning and should not remain dependent upon her husband is a flawed approach.” The law must ensure that the spouse who invested time, effort and years into building the family is not left economically stranded, the judge added.
The bench emphasised that the law must recognise not only financial earnings but also the “economic value” of a wife’s contribution to the home and the domestic relationship during the subsistence of marriage.
Managing a household, caring for children, supporting the family and adjusting one’s life around the career & transfers of the earning spouse are all forms of work, even though they were unpaid and often unacknowledged, the judge noted, adding, “These responsibilities do not appear in bank statements or generate taxable income, yet they form the invisible structure on which many families function.”
“The assumption that a non-earning spouse is ‘idle’ reflects a misunderstanding of domestic contributions. To describe non-employment as idleness is easy. But to recognise the labour involved in sustaining a household is far more difficult. A homemaker does not sit idle; she performs labour that enables the earning spouse to function effectively.
To disregard this contribution while adjudicating claims of maintenance would be unrealistic and unjust. This court is, therefore, unable to agree with any view that equates the non-employment of a wife with idleness or deliberate dependence on the husband,” the judge held in an order passed on February 16.
The high court was hearing an appeal against an order of a magisterial court, which had refused to grant interim maintenance to the woman on the grounds that she was able-bodied and well-educated but had chosen not to seek employment.