In a significant legal ruling, the Allahabad High Court has held that a widowed daughter-in-law is entitled to claim maintenance from her father-in-law if she lacks financial means. The judgment was delivered by a division bench consisting of Justice Saumitra Dayal Singh and Justice Donadi Ramesh, in response to an appeal filed by Shree Rajpati, who contested the Rs 3,000 monthly maintenance awarded to his widowed daughter-in-law, Bhuri Devi, by a family court in Agra.
The court acknowledged the societal reality where many widowed women return to live with their parents due to various reasons. It emphasized that such a choice should not be interpreted as the woman voluntarily separating from her matrimonial home without valid reason or being financially independent.
Bhuri Devi’s husband, a daily wage laborer employed by the state irrigation department, was murdered in 1999. Since then, she claimed to have no source of income, had not remarried, and sought financial support from her father-in-law, arguing that her husband would have been entitled to his share of the agricultural property had he been alive.
The father-in-law, Shree Rajpati, argued that Bhuri Devi had remarried and worked as a cook at a college, but the court found no evidence to support this claim. The certificate submitted by the college principal did not specify Bhuri Devi’s income, which made it insufficient as proof of her employment.
However, considering that the father-in-law was 70 years old and financially dependent on his other sons, the court partly modified the maintenance order. It reduced the monthly maintenance amount from Rs 3,000 to Rs 1,000, upholding the interim order dated August 31.
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