Judicial Discretion Vs. Statutory Silence: The Case For Maintenance Calculation Guidelines In India

Full Text Link

Priyandita Sethy, Birla Global University

Gnanada Veeravalli, Birla Global University

ABSTRACT

The current law on maintenance in India is heavily dependent on judicial discretion since they do not have the statutory standards about the manner in which to compute amounts. Courts determine maintenance as things in terms of income and standard of living, and personal needs, which we can find in the landmark cases, such as Rajnesh v Neha (2020), which attempted to establish loose guidelines but did not have a successful legislative support. Such statutory silence turns out to contribute to the consequences and result in a wide range and can be quite arbitrary, which results in unequal outcomes and a difficult challenge in ensuring fairness and transparency. Other economies such as UK, USA and Singapore adopt formulaic or standardized models to maintain uniformity in maintenance awards as a way of guiding India on the same. Considering the Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, the rationale behind introducing a Uniform Maintenance Code or statutory principles to render maintenance decisions fair, open, and foreseeable and reduce the unpredictable ups and downs of judicial discretion has a lot of ground.

Keywords: Maintenance Laws, judicial discretion, statutory silence, Rajnesh v. Neha, gender equality, uniform maintenance code, personal laws, family law reform

JUDICIAL DISCRETION VS. STATUTORY SILENCE- THE CASE FOR MAINTENANCE CALCULATION GUIDELINES

Download STATUTORY SILENCE- THE CASE FOR MAINTENANCE CALCULATION GUIDELINES • 268KB