Bombay high court says wife not a ‘deemed maid’, failing to do chores, not cruelty

MUMBAI: “Mere failure of wife to do chores such as cooking, cleaning does not automatically amount to cruelty as marriage is a partnership of equals and not a service contract and the wives are not ‘deemed maids’,” said Bombay High Court this month, dismissing a husband’s plea for divorce on grounds of cruelty.

A wife’s refusal to perform daily chores does not qualify as mental cruelty, said Justices Bharti Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande in a May 8 judgment and set aside a 2010 Bandra family court decree of divorce and order denying her maintenance.

The HC said the family court's denial of maintenance relied on a solitary ad issued by the wife of a “art and craft” class; however, “there is no reliable material to establish” that such activity translated into a regular or sufficient source of independent income, the HC said.

The husband, however, as a chartered accountant, possesses professional qualifications and earning capacity to maintain her, the HC reasoned and held her entitled to maintenance of Rs 10,000 per month and another Rs 10,000 per month towards her residential accommodation.

The wife, aged 31, in 2010, appealed against the family court orders of July 2010 by which her husband’s 2004 plea for divorce was granted and her plea for maintenance, denied. On March 17, 2026, the HC reserved the appeals for orders. She was represented by a legal aid advocate.

The marriage was solemnised in 2002, and within days, the husband said disputes arose, and within months, the wife went back to her parents’ home. The husband said he waited for a considerable period before filing for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, as she was not doing her household work, was disobeying his parents, was unable to cook, was rude to him, and caused him mental stress. He also said he had no stable job and depended on income from articleship.

The wife denied refusing to do domestic work and said that, in fact, she was made to do all household work, including washing utensils and clothes, cooking, and cleaning the house, and was also made to eat leftover food. Her lawyer said as a legally wedded woman, she was entitled to “decent maintenance and residence, befitting the husband’s status.” The family court failed to see that she had left her marital home due to “harassment” from him and his kin.

The HC said the allegations made against the wife were “general” in nature. “They are usually made by the parties to a marriage in the initial days of adjustments. Thus, this ordinary wear and tear of marriage has been given undue weightage to treat it as cruelty,” the HC said. The bench said to attract ‘cruelty’ as a ground under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act, the acts must be of such intensity that they “must make cohabitation of the other spouse impossible.”

“There has to be a continuous humiliation, severe persistent behavioural issues, and false allegations that would result in humiliation and lowering one’s image in public,” the HC said to invoke cruelty. But since there are no definite parameters of cruelty, its meaning becomes fact- and case-based, the HC elaborated. Bald allegations supported by interested witnesses—wife and aunt—were unsustainable in this case, said the HC, and held the family court order granting divorce was without proof of cruelty by wife.

While not referred to, a 2007 Supreme Court authoritative judgment by Justice Dalveer Bhandari established a framework to define ‘mental cruelty’ as a ground for divorce. It cited an 1865 English court ruling to say it “aptly observed that cruelty lies in the cumulative ill conduct which the history of marriage discloses.”