- Friday, February 28, 2025
The verdict came over a case in Tamil Nadu where a woman allegedly tried to claim sole ownership over all possessions with her husband who went abroad to work and sent her money.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN a significant verdict, the Madras High Court has said that women homemakers are entitled to receive equal share of property bought from their husband’s income. It also said that the job of a homemaker wife is of 24 hours without holidays and it cannot be less equated with that of an earning husband who works for only eight hours in a day.
Justice Krishnan Ramasamy said that the wife makes a contribution towards the family by taking care of the household and children. He said in generality of marriages, it is the wife who bears and rears children and minds the home business and frees her husband for his economic activities.
He said that since it is the wife’s performance of her function which helps the husband to carry out his, the former is entitled to share in the fruits.
While Justice Ramasamy recognised there is no legislation enacted to acknowledge a wife’s domestic contributions, he said that if the acquisition of assets is made by both the partners’ joint contribution — one through employment and another by means of caring for the family — both are entitled to equal share.
The court in the southern state of Tamil Nadu also observed that as a homemaker, a wife multitasks as a manager, home doctor, home economist and a chef.
The verdict, which has been welcomed by several women’s rights activists, was passed over a case that involved a couple in the state who got married in 1965. The husband had moved to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s for employment, leaving his wife and three minor children behind. With no income of her own, she bought several assets then, in terms of real estate and jewellery, using the money her spouse sent home.
When the man returned home in 1994, he alleged that his wife was trying to claim sole ownership over all their possessions. He also accused her of hiding her gold jewellery and sought to sell one of the assets by giving the power of attorney to a person with whom she allegedly had an affair, the BBC reported.
The dispute covered five assets — four of which were properties bought in the wife’s name, including a house and land. The fifth comprised jewelleries, gold bar and sarees that were gifted to the woman by her husband.
The man moved a trial court in 1995 to claim ownership of all the five assets, including the gifts he had given her.
According to him, all the assets were purchased with his money and his wife only held them on his behalf. The man passed away in 2007 and his children thereafter took up the claim.
The defendant’s counsel said the couple had a mutual understanding that the wife would stay at home and take care of the children and the husband could work overseas. Otherwise, the wife could have worked as a teacher and made earnings, Hindustan Times reported.
According to the court, had the wife not agreed, the husband could not have gone abroad and earned “all the money”. It said the wife gave continuous service round the clock by taking care of the household and had the husband engaged maids for three shifts for eight hours a day, he might have ended up spending huge money and could not buy any property or make savings.
Flavia Agnes, a women’s rights lawyer, praised the verdict calling it a “very positive judgement” as it recognises women’s domestic labour, the BBC added.
Malavika Rajkotia, a family and property lawyer, also hailed the judgment as “a very important milestone” — one that women had been “trying to evolve and plead in their various cases”.
She said judges in India had earlier put a notional value to a homemaker’s income to award compensation to their families in road accident claims. In some cases, monthly amounts ranging between Rs 5,000 (£47.9) and Rs 9,000 (£86.2) had been fixed for a homemaker’s work.
“But it translated into numbers that were not large enough to become meaningful,” she told the BBC.
“This is, for the first time, a meaningful recognition of the homemaker’s right.”
