In a maintenance proceeding brought under Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the provision that has replaced Section 125 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure), the question before the Supreme Court was how a husband's existing loan or EMI commitments, taken out to acquire or build an asset, should factor into the assessment of how much maintenance he is liable to pay his wife.
The husband had argued that his monthly loan repayments reduced his disposable income and should correspondingly reduce the maintenance payable. The Supreme Court rejected the proposition that such repayments can be equated, for maintenance-assessment purposes, with necessary day-to-day expenditure such as subsistence costs or dependants' basic needs. The Court held that loan repayments directed toward creating or acquiring an asset represent, in substance, a form of investment or wealth accumulation for the paying spouse, and that treating such commitments as a deduction that substantially dilutes the primary obligation to maintain a spouse would allow a paying spouse to prioritise his own asset-building over his statutory duty to ensure the other spouse can live with reasonable dignity.
The Court reaffirmed that the obligation to pay maintenance to a spouse without independent means is a primary legal obligation, and that maintenance must not be illusory: it must be assessed having regard to a balanced consideration of the paying spouse's actual earning capacity (not merely his post-deduction residual income after voluntary financial commitments) and the recipient spouse's reasonable needs. A loan undertaken for asset creation is, on this reasoning, a choice within the paying spouse's own financial planning, not a prior charge that can be set off against the maintenance obligation ahead of the spouse's basic needs.