Bombay High Court: Sets Aside Alimony Order Based on Income Guesswork

The Bombay High Court recently quashed a Pune family court order granting ₹10 lakhs as permanent alimony to a woman, after finding the family court based its decision purely on "guesswork" of her estranged husband’s income. In the absence of proper income details, he family court judge had assumed that the husband earned ₹1 lakh per month since he was a skilled and qualified person who had earlier worked in Germany. A Division Bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Ashish S Chavan strongly disapproved of this approach, observing that the family court judge had carried out such guesswork without any evidence. "The learned Judge has merely carried out a guess work without any evidence produced on record as to what is the earning of the husband and what is the need of the wife," the High Court observed. Justices Bharati Dangre and Ashish S ChavanThe High Court, therefore, remanded the matter back to the family court for fresh adjudication. It directed the family court judge to determine the amount of permanent alimony by drawing a statement of the earnings of the husband and the needs of the wife.  “We deem it appropriate to remand the matter back to the Judge, Family Court, Pune, for determination of the amount of permanent alimony as well as the amount of maintenance to be paid to the daughter, which would necessarily have to be commensurate with the earnings of the appellant since the learned Judge has merely carried out a guess work without any evidence pr