THE RATIO. One judgment, decoded twice: once for anyone, once for the profession.

Case Details

  • Citation: 2026 INSC 822 (Civil Appeal Nos. 10509-10510 of 2026, arising out of Special Leave Petition (Civil) Nos. 31815-31816 of 2025)
  • Court: Supreme Court of India, Civil Appellate Jurisdiction
  • Decided: August 10, 2026
  • On appeal from: High Court of Delhi, MAT.APP.(F.C.) 299/2024 with CONT.CAS(C) 634/2025 (Final Judgment dated 14.08.2025) and the Clarification Order dated 02.09.2025 in CM Appl. 55169/2025
  • Counsel or Representation: Not stated in the reported judgment
  • Key precedents applied: None cited. The Court decides on the statutory maintenance scheme and its own recalculation of the trial court’s income findings.
  • Governing provisions: Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, ss. 13(1)(ia), 24, 26; Article 136, Constitution of India; s. 151, Code of Civil Procedure, 1908
  • Key paragraphs: [18]-[23] (reconsideration of quantum, provident fund and ESOP deductions, revised figures)

Headnote

A Delhi couple’s long running maintenance dispute reached the Supreme Court seven years after the husband left the marriage. The core legal point was narrow but practically significant: can a paying parent’s provident fund and employee stock plan contributions count as compulsory deductions that shrink his income for maintenance purposes? The Supreme Court said no, since that money still belongs to him and will eventually come back to him, unlike income tax. Along the way, the Court also noticed that the wife’s own maintenance, granted months earlier after she was diagnosed with cancer, had quietly disappeared from the High Court’s final order, and restored it. The result was a modest increase for the children and the wife alike, with the door left open for further revision if circumstances change.

Factual Background

Harpreet Sawhney and Puneet Sharma married under Sikh rites in New Delhi in December 2004. They had two sons, born in 2011 and 2014. The marriage broke down, and Sharma left Sawhney and the children in June 2018. Sawhney filed for divorce on the ground of cruelty under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act before the Family Court at Tis Hazari, Delhi, and alongside it sought interim maintenance for herself and the children under Sections 24 and 26 of the Act, citing school fees and a home loan instalment she was carrying largely on her own salary.

In January 2021, the Family Court declined to award Sawhney personal maintenance but granted maintenance for the two children, starting at Rs. 37,000 per child per month and rising to Rs. 40,000 per child per month from January 2021, based on findings that Sawhney earned roughly Rs. 91,000 a month against Sharma’s roughly Rs. 2,70,000, and that she alone carried a monthly home loan instalment of nearly Rs. 49,000. Sharma appealed, and the Delhi High Court affirmed the quantum in March 2021, leaving visitation arrangements to be worked out separately.

The dispute then broadened considerably. In 2021, Sharma applied for expanded visitation, oversight of the maintenance funds on an allegation that Sawhney had misused money and built up undisclosed savings, a reduction in maintenance based on pandemic era school fee discounts, and the return of certain property documents. Sawhney denied the allegations and pointed out that even Sharma’s own proposed figures fell short of the children’s actual costs. In 2022 she sought a further increase, citing documented monthly child expenses of over Rs. 1,66,000 and rising school fees; Sharma opposed this too, disputing her figures and accusing her of perjury. A separate dispute arose over a car the family had bought together, which Sawhney said she had largely paid for and used exclusively since 2017. The Family Court resolved all three pending applications in July 2024, raising maintenance to Rs. 50,000 per child per month from that April, while declining to decide the car dispute within maintenance proceedings.

Sawhney appealed the July 2024 order to the Delhi High Court. Weeks later, she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, and in December 2024 the High Court directed Sharma to pay her Rs. 20,000 a month in interim personal maintenance. Sharma did not comply, and over the following months the High Court found him in contempt, a challenge he took unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court, and eventually had to seek police assistance to secure his presence at a hearing after repeated non-appearances. In August 2025, the High Court disposed of the appeal and the contempt proceeding together, raising the children’s combined maintenance to Rs. 1,25,000 a month from April 2024 and recording Sharma’s undertaking to transfer the family car to Sawhney. Sawhney then sought clarification on three points, including how certain salary deductions should be characterized and the basis of the contempt finding. The High Court’s September 2025 order gave Sharma six months to clear arrears but left the other two points unaddressed.

The Question for Determination

Did the High Court get the maintenance number right, in particular by allowing some of the father’s own retirement savings to count against him as if they were unavoidable expenses, and did it overlook the mother’s own maintenance, granted earlier because of her illness, when it issued its final order?

Framed precisely, the question was whether the quantum of child maintenance fixed by the High Court required reconsideration, specifically whether contributions to a provident fund and an employee stock purchase plan could be treated as compulsory deductions reducing the husband’s disposable income for the purpose of computing maintenance under Sections 24 and 26 of the Hindu Marriage Act, and whether the wife’s previously granted interim personal maintenance needed to be addressed despite its absence from the High Court’s final order.

The Court’s Reasoning

The Court’s starting point was the High Court’s own figures. The High Court had accepted Sharma’s monthly income at approximately Rs. 4,50,000, made up of a roughly Rs. 4,00,000 salary and an annual bonus averaging about Rs. 6,00,000, and had then deducted Rs. 1,64,856 for what it termed compulsory deductions, including income tax, provident fund, and professional tax, leaving disposable income of about Rs. 2,80,000. Sawhney’s counsel argued that lumping provident fund and ESOP contributions in with income tax overstated how much of Sharma’s salary was genuinely unavailable to him. The Supreme Court agreed. Unlike tax, it held, provident fund and stock plan contributions do not leave the employee’s hands permanently, they accrue to his own account and can eventually be withdrawn, so treating them the same as a mandatory tax outflow was not appropriate when assessing what he could actually afford to pay.

The Court also weighed Sawhney’s medical situation directly into the outcome. She was undergoing treatment for aggressive breast cancer while continuing to care for both children, who lived with her, and the Court said it remained mindful of the resulting expenses in fixing both the children’s maintenance and her own.

On the children’s maintenance, the Court found the amount fixed by the High Court insufficient and raised it to Rs. 1,50,000 a month combined, or Rs. 75,000 per child, with effect from 1 January 2025, while confirming that this did not preclude Sawhney from seeking a further increase if circumstances changed again. On Sawhney’s own maintenance, the Court flagged something the High Court’s final order appeared to have missed: the Rs. 20,000 monthly interim payment ordered in December 2024, tied to her cancer diagnosis, had not been carried forward into the August 2025 judgment at all. Treating that as an oversight rather than a deliberate withdrawal, the Court restored the entitlement at an increased Rs. 30,000 a month, again citing her medical expenses.

On the car, the Court made no separate order, since Sharma had already undertaken before the High Court to transfer it to Sawhney and remained bound by that undertaking. It directed him to comply with all of the above within three months and disposed of the appeals accordingly.

Critical Assessment

The opinion is more assertive than explanatory on the arithmetic. The Court states plainly that provident fund and ESOP contributions should not be treated as compulsory deductions, a proposition that will be useful to future litigants and family courts working through similar salary slips. But it does not then show its own math, recalculating Sharma’s true disposable income once those items are added back, and connecting that figure to the new maintenance total. The Rs. 1,50,000 combined figure reads as following from a general sense that more was warranted given the corrected income view and the family’s medical costs, rather than from a stated computation. For a ruling likely to be cited for its income principle, the absence of a worked example is a real gap.

On the substance of that principle, though, the Court’s instinct is sound. Salaried respondents in maintenance litigation frequently list every payroll deduction, including voluntary retirement and investment contributions, as money that has already left their income, when in fact it has simply moved into an account that remains theirs. Treating only genuinely non-recoverable charges like income tax as a true reduction in disposable income is a fair and administrable line, and one that other family courts assessing a salaried respondent’s real capacity to pay are likely to find useful.

The Court’s catch on the missing personal maintenance figure is a good instance of an appellate court actually reading the record rather than simply reviewing the arguments briefed before it. Sawhney’s clarification application to the High Court had raised a related but different point, about how Sharma’s deductions were characterized and the basis for the contempt finding, rather than squarely flagging that her own maintenance had vanished from the operative order. The Supreme Court noticed the gap anyway and closed it, which is the kind of attentiveness a litigant recovering from cancer treatment while managing protracted litigation should be able to rely on but cannot always assume.

What the decision does not tidy up is the arrears picture it leaves behind. The children’s entitlements ran at different rates for different periods: Rs. 40,000 per child before April 2024, Rs. 50,000 per child under the Family Court’s 2024 order, Rs. 1,25,000 combined under the High Court’s 2025 judgment, and now Rs. 1,50,000 combined only from January 2025 onward. The judgment also does not state when the restored Rs. 30,000 personal maintenance itself takes effect. Given that this same husband had already been found in aggravated contempt for non-payment and required police assistance to be produced before the High Court, a cleaner statement of exactly what is owed for which period would have done more to head off the next round of enforcement litigation than the quantum increase alone.

Implications

If you’re not a lawyer: If you are the paying parent in a maintenance dispute in India, do not expect your provident fund or employee stock plan contributions to be treated the same as income tax when a court works out how much you can afford to pay. That money is still yours, simply saved rather than spent, and courts are likely to look past it to your real earning capacity. If you are the parent receiving support, this case is also a reminder that maintenance figures are not frozen: courts can and do revisit them as school fees rise, health needs change, or a parent’s income shifts, and it is worth returning to court when the numbers no longer reflect reality rather than assuming an earlier order is the last word.

For the profession: The usable proposition here is narrow but practical: provident fund and similar retirement linked or equity linked salary deductions should not automatically be netted out as compulsory deductions when computing disposable income under Sections 24 and 26 of the Hindu Marriage Act, and only genuinely mandatory, non-recoverable charges belong in that category. Counsel for maintenance claimants should scrutinize a respondent’s payslip deductions line by line rather than accepting a lump sum figure at face value. On the drafting side, this case is also a caution to check that a consolidated final order actually carries forward every interim entitlement previously granted, since an omission that looks like a mere drafting gap can otherwise sit unresolved through an entire further round of litigation.