NEW DELHI: Maintenance has to be awarded only after considering the husband's ability to pay and his liabilities, a trial court has said while denying relief to a mentally unstable woman who had sought interim maintenance from her estranged husband in a domestic violence case.

The court dismissed the woman's plea saying that the man had a "meager salary" and was already maintaining his widowed mother and mentally unstable child. The court observed that the man was left with "almost nothing" as he was earning a mere Rs 4,500 per month.

Additional sessions judge Amit Bansal's order came while upholding a magisterial court's order which too had refused interim maintenance to the woman on the same grounds. The sessions court, however, took exception to the magisterial court's observation that it was "only a moral duty" of her husband to provide her maintenance. "The court has committed an error of law by mentioning that it was only a moral duty of a husband to provide maintenance to his wife and children as it is the legal duty of the husband," the judge held. The court observed that the man spends Rs 1,300 per month on medical care for his mother and son, besides other miscellaneous expenses including power, water, etc. "It is evident that the husband is earning a meager salary and all of it is spent upon the above said heads of expenditure," the court said. 

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