What to Do If the Husband Does Not Pay Maintenance?

Question: A lady explained her problem: my husband beat me and threw me out of the house. There has been no talaq (divorce). I filed a maintenance (naan nafqa) suit, but to this day the court has neither awarded maintenance nor has my husband paid it.

Solution: Then, ma'am, you should change your lawyer. The law is quite clear on this. The law now stands as follows: the day your former husband makes his first appearance in court, your interim maintenance should be fixed by the very next hearing. This is the law. I keep saying the same thing again and again, that all this law exists for you women, it's the man who has to figure out how to navigate it. If you have filed a maintenance suit and you are not getting interim maintenance, then, as soon as you file the suit, once your husband appears in court, he gets one chance, until the next hearing, to file a written reply. Whether he files that reply or not, the court is bound to fix your interim maintenance, there's no question of any court refusing to fix your interim maintenance.

Now, from what I understand from your question, you also want to reconcile and live together. So, ma'am, request your lawyer to please have mercy on you. Go to court yourself, or have him say, it's been so long since I filed my suit, my husband has also appeared, and maintenance still hasn't been fixed. You didn't mention how long your case has been running. You've asked a simple question. Based on my experience, I'm assuming the circumstances, and from that I understand you want to reconcile, and that you filed a restitution of conjugal rights (bahali) suit only in the hope that somehow my husband will take me back. You also didn't mention whether you have children or not.

The best solution is reconciliation, the least desirable option is divorce. As far as maintenance goes, if you're not getting interim maintenance, go to court yourself and tell the judge, I have learned that the law is such that once the defendant, once the husband, appears, my maintenance is fixed right after that, so please give me my interim maintenance.

Now, the other possibility is that your husband hasn't appeared at all. Things have been made quite simple now: as soon as you file a suit, all the processes, in Urdu talbana, in English process, both types of summonses are issued together, including notice, summons, and public notice/newspaper publication, all issued together. And when all of this is issued together and your husband deliberately does not appear, the court immediately proceeds ex-parte against him. Once ex-parte proceedings begin, you are asked to present your evidence ex-parte. Understand what all should be included in that ex-parte evidence.

A common query I get is, sir, I asked for fifty thousand in maintenance and got only five thousand, I asked for thirty thousand and got only two thousand. Look, these are matrimonial matters, family matters for sure, but they still run according to law and procedure. No court is bound to accept anyone's mere verbal claim without evidence. When you ask for maintenance, you write down, I need fifty thousand, well, first you have to prove your husband's income. If you're asking twenty thousand for yourself, and you have two children, twenty thousand each for them, that's sixty thousand total, to get that sixty thousand you'll need to show his income at around one and a half lakh. You'll need to prove in court that your husband earns more than one and a half lakh per month.

For this, if your husband works for a firm, a company, a government department, write down those details. It's not necessary that you have his pay slip, you're not in a position to present his pay slip in court, no, that's not something within your power, but you do know, my husband is a soldier in the army, my husband is a captain in the army, my husband is an employee of WAPDA, my husband works at such-and-such company, my husband is a daily-wage labourer, my husband runs a business, my husband runs a business at this location, my husband does this kind of business, my husband's businesses are in these cities. You can at least say this much. Fine, you don't have his pay slip, you don't have everything, but you know what he does. When you and your witnesses state that, sir, her husband is a captain in the army, a major in the army, an SDO at WAPDA, a lineman at WAPDA, a patwari in the revenue department, whatever the case is, these are the kinds of jobs where the court will summon records from the relevant department where he is serving, to establish this.

For this, your lawyer, when filing the suit, should prepare two lists, a list of documents relied upon and a list of documents produced. In the third column of the list relied upon, he should write that this person is employed in this department, at this place, and that his salary record be summoned from that department. If he runs a business, and you say, suppose you're in Lahore, that he has a shop in Abid Market, runs such-and-such business, your lawyer should file an application to prove this, stating that we know the location of his shop, that this business is carried on there, and request that a local commission be appointed, to go there and assess the situation. When the court-appointed local commission arrives there, it will come back with a report saying, yes, this person runs a business there, it's his own business, and his monthly income is this much. And even if the husband appears and lies, saying, I run a business but I only earn twenty thousand a month, there's a way around that too, it takes effort, and that effort only happens when you pay your counsel properly.

In this, your lawyer should file an application in court that his NTN number be obtained and a report be sought from the taxation department about his monthly income, because income up to six lakh rupees is tax-exempt, and six lakh means his income is fifty thousand rupees a month, and if the report from the taxation department comes back showing he paid five thousand rupees in income tax, that means his monthly income is at least fifty thousand rupees.

You need to handle all these matters, they differ in every case, every case has to be read on its own facts, every case has to be assessed according to its own circumstances, and only then is the case filed. There is no reason at all why, if your husband did not appear, ex-parte proceedings took place, you presented your evidence, and a decree was passed in your favour, and it reaches the execution stage, the husband will be arrested in execution proceedings. He'll be arrested and produced in court, and if he isn't arrested, then when he does come to court, the court now says that ex-parte decree, that ex-parte order, can only be set aside once you deposit that much amount. So I really don't see any issue in your case, that you filed a maintenance suit and still haven't received maintenance to this day, it's beyond my understanding.