Can a woman admittedly in void marriage claim maintenance against her husband under Hindu law?

The Root of the Problem

To understand the difficulty, one must first appreciate what a void marriage means in law. Under Section 11 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, a marriage is void ab initio — that is, null from the very beginning — if it violates the conditions under Section 5(i) (bigamy), Section 5(iv) (prohibited relationship), or Section 5(v) (sapinda relationship). A void marriage, strictly speaking, is no marriage at all. It confers no status, creates no rights, and imposes no obligations. This elementary proposition is where the trouble begins for the woman who, often innocently, enters into such a union.

The Conflicting Positions

The question of whether such a woman can claim maintenance generated a long and unhappy conflict among the High Courts. The Andhra Pradesh High Court, in Abbayolla M. Subba Reddy v. Padmamma (AIR 1999 AP 19), held that a second wife could not maintain an application under Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, on the ground that the marriage being void, she cannot be called a "wife" at all. The Full Bench of the Bombay High Court, after some oscillation in earlier judgments, eventually took the same position — that since a void marriage is no marriage in the eyes of law, no legal obligation of maintenance could be fastened upon the husband. A void union, the court reasoned, creates no status, and without status, there can be no right.

The Supreme Court in Yamunabai v. Anantrao (AIR 1988 SC 644) firmly held that the expression "wife" in Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure has a restricted meaning and that a woman whose marriage is void by reason of the husband's subsisting earlier marriage is not entitled to maintenance under that provision. This position was reiterated in Savitaben Samabhai Bhatiya v. State of Gujarat (AIR 2005 SC 1809), where even a woman kept in the dark about the husband's first marriage was denied maintenance, the Court observing that the legislature, while protecting children of void marriages, had not extended a similar protection to the mother.

The Humanitarian Turn: Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act

The more compassionate strand of judicial thinking found its anchor in Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act, which empowers the court to grant permanent alimony upon passing "any decree." The Supreme Court, in Ramesh Chandra Daga v. Rameshwari Daga (2004 10 JT 366), held that once a decree of nullity is passed — even in respect of a void marriage — the claimant spouse is entitled to maintenance under Section 25. The Court, relying on its earlier decision in Chand Dhawan v. Jawaharlal Dhawan, held that the phrase "any decree" is wide enough to include a decree of nullity under Section 11, and that the legislature, in preserving the right of permanent maintenance dependent upon a court passing a decree under Sections 9 to 14, had necessarily included a decree of nullity within its compass.

The reasoning is both logical and equitable: a woman who lived as a wife, discharged marital duties, and remained faithful cannot be cast out without any remedy simply because the man she married had concealed a prior subsisting marriage. The Supreme Court even drew upon the constitutional ethos of protection for women and children, quoting in Daga the evocative words it had used in Capt. Ramesh Chander Kaushal v. Veena Kaushal (AIR 1978 SC 1807) — "The brooding presence of the Constitutional empathy for the weaker sections like women and children must inform interpretation."

The Critical Distinction: Knowledge of the Void Marriage

The most important judicial refinement on this question concerns the woman's state of knowledge. Courts have consistently drawn a distinction between a woman who knowingly enters a void marriage and one who is deceived into it. In Suresh Khullar v. Vijay Kumar Khullar (AIR 2002 Del 373), where a first marriage was revived after an ex parte divorce decree was set aside, rendering the second marriage retrospectively void, the court held that the second wife was entitled to maintenance under Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act. Similarly, in Narender Pal Kaur Chawla v. Manjit Singh Chawla, the Delhi High Court held that a husband who defrauds a woman by declaring himself a bachelor is estopped from challenging the validity of that marriage — the court founding its order even on the inherent powers under Section 151 of the Civil Procedure Code.

The Supreme Court itself reconciled the Yamunabai and Savitaben line of cases with the more liberal approach by observing that those rulings apply only where the woman marries with full knowledge of the subsisting first marriage. Where the man keeps the woman in the dark, a different equitable consideration operates and the husband cannot be permitted to take advantage of his own wrong to deny maintenance.

The Position Under Section 18 of the HAMA

The position under Section 18 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956 remains more restrictive than under Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act. The expression "Hindu wife" in Section 18 has been interpreted, by the stricter judicial view, to mean only a lawfully wedded wife. Since a void marriage confers no status of "wife," the claim under Section 18 is difficult to sustain. However, as the discussion above shows, courts have at times reached equitable results by invoking inherent powers, the doctrine of estoppel, or a liberal construction of the provision — particularly where the woman was deceived and had lived as a wife for many years.

The Settled Position in Summary

The law on this subject can be understood through three distinct situations. Where a marriage is void and both parties know it from the outset — or where the woman knew of the husband's subsisting earlier marriage — she is not entitled to maintenance under Section 18 of the HAMA or under Section 125 of the CrPC. However, where a decree of nullity has been passed under Section 11 of the Hindu Marriage Act, Section 25 of that Act becomes operative and the court is empowered to grant maintenance. And where the woman was deceived into the void marriage, equity and the wider constitutional values support the grant of maintenance, whether under Section 25 of the Hindu Marriage Act or through the court's inherent powers. The law thus protects the innocent — the woman who entered the union in good faith — even when the union itself is denied recognition.