If we look at the inception of the law on maintenance and focus on Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, it will be essentially clear that the provisions focus entirely on providing the benefit to wife, parents and children of the man. Taking the same point of view into consideration, numerous judgments have also been passed stating that maintenance should be provided to wife, parents and children.

Subsequently, with a change in social conditions and advancement of status of women in certain fields, a change was observed. However, such change is not reflected in Section 125 of Code of Criminal Procedure yet and it needs to be depicted there. Contrary to the previous conditions, wives have become independent who work and earn for themselves as well. With this change in social status of women, certain changes in the laws are also necessary to be implemented.

In the case of Rajnesh v. Neha[1], the Apex Court had laid down several guidelines regarding the payment of maintenance and in order to ascertain the quantum and necessity of maintenance, the Court laid down certain indicative factors as follows[2]:

(a) the status of the parties;

(b) reasonable needs of the wife and dependent children;

(c) whether the applicant is educated and professionally qualified;

(d) whether the applicant has any independent source of income;

(e) whether the income is sufficient to enable the applicant to maintain the same standard of living as she was accustomed to in her matrimonial home;

(f) whether the applicant was employed prior to her marriage;

(g) whether she was working during the subsistence of the marriage;

(h) whether the wife was required to sacrifice her employment opportunities for nurturing the family, child rearing, and looking after adult members of the family;

(i) reasonable costs of litigation for a non-working wife.

These indicative factors helped in establishing a balance between the rights and obligations of both the spouses instead of simply shifting the burden towards one party.

Keeping the same principle in mind, a recent judgment of the Bombay High Court instructed the wife to pay maintenance to the husband. However, this judgment was passed on the basis of Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 which discusses about permanent alimony and maintenance. In this case namely, Bhagyashri Jaiswal vs Jagdish Sajjanlal Jaiswal & Anr., the man claimed that he had no source of income and he suffered from some health issues that had rendered him unfit for work.[3] Hence, the Court upheld the decision of the lower court and put forth such a judgment.