A Liposuction of Maintenance & Alimony Laws

Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising said she and several women in the country were not only opposed to the expression “keep” but also to the use of phrase “one night stand’ by the Bench in the judgement. “The words are derogatory,” she said


Alimony/Maintenance encourages women to incapacitate themselves. Alimony also increases an already large portion of a physically fit and yet morally handicapped population of women. This contradiction leads to mental imbalance and conflicting behavior among women. For example filing criminal cases against husband and yet asks for Restitution of Conjugal Rights(sic).


Alimony & Maintenance reverse the effects of empowerment, in the sense that they feel constantly dependent on the husband’s male capacity to earn. What greater sense of empowerment is there for a woman who would reject Maintenance and start earning her own living and spending her own hard earned money!! The best assets a woman can have: self-respect, self-confidence, education and ability to sustain her life on her own. Also, an equal share in parental property adds to her financial security.

Alimony/ Maintenance laws are forcing women to create fictional stories of domestic violence & dowry harassment, consequently women start believing their own fiction and hence ignites a chain reaction of sociopathic and psychopathic behavior in them.

Alimony/Maintenance encourages women to commit perjury in court. Even though perjury is a serious crime, since Alimony/Maintenance are the only laws of financial gain which do not ask for proof of investment, it forces the courts to take a lenient view against perjury and slowly starts creating a situation of contempt against itself. This has a serious potential to lead to mental breakdown of judicial officers who are also mere mortals having their own livelihood issues and personal pressures.


An Alimony/Maintenance based economy fosters a generation of children who are bound to be socially and mentally imbalanced misfits. These children are already growing up with an attitude that extortion and perjury is a valid tool of life sustenance. Moral values of the next generation will touch the bottom of the begging bowl. Out of a misguided sense of entitlement; children of this dysfunctional generation will end up begging and looting their own parents , peers, spouses and their own children thereby ending the human race in a feeding frenzy of cannibalism.

The concept of Alimony/Maintenance is in contradiction to laws against beggary and vagrancy.

Because of laws for Alimony/Maintenance women have lowered their image of themselves and promoted the idea that they are the weaker sex. This issue has gone to such an extent that in India, these women loathe the idea that their children might one day become like themselves. Therefore, Indian women are killing their own babies/foetuses if they even suspect that it might be a female child. Female infanticide/foeticide is a direct result of Alimony/Maintenance.

Our idea is to Launch a Womens’ Self-Respect Day. On this day the world will honour and propagate the ideal of equality where women realize that they no longer need support from men either morally, socially or financially. On this day the world will honor women like President Pratibha Patil, Sushma Swaraj, Meira Kumar, Indira Jaising, Indira Nooyi etc., who have made it on their own to become leaders of a nation. On this day, women will give a token amount of money to their husband, father, brother etc., as a mark of independence. On this day, self-respecting, right-thinking, hardworking women will reiterate their disgust and express their loathing of female subjugating and sexually derogatory laws like Alimony & Maintenance.


Co-authored by Uma Challa & Partha