Are women entitled to monetary support after divorce as they sacrifice careers for their families?

Only because a woman is “capable” of earning a living for herself, does not absolve her estranged husband from providing her with financial support after divorce, the Delhi High Court ruled last week.

In this present case, a man had appealed an order passed by a family court in 2018, requiring him to pay maintenance to his divorced wife. He disputes that since she was working in the past, she should be able to simply go back to earning money to monetarily support herself.

His wife, the respondent, pleaded that she was employed “only for a short period and the salary she was receiving was not enough to sustain herself and live as per the same standard as she lived during her marriage.”

Justice Subramonium Prasad, who was hearing the matter, stated, “Many a times, wives sacrifice their career only for the family.”

In any case, it is not fair to not provide her with any degree of financial support given that wives can lose out on years of work experience while performing unpaid labor at home. This labor allows their husbands to engage in paid work outside the home — which makes her labor her contribution to the couple’s overall standard of living. In fact, it is this labor that makes their family’s income as much her’s as it is the husband’s.

it is often believed that women make out better than men in divorce proceedings, however, research states otherwise. Women who worked before, during, or after their marriages see a stark 20 percent drop in income at the end of their marriages, according to Stephen Jenkins, a professor at the London School of Economics. Jenkin’s research found that men, on the other hand, tend to see their incomes rise more than 30 percent post-divorce. Not to mention, the poverty rate for divorced women is 27 percent, almost triple the figure for divorced men.

Women like the one in question, who leave the workforce for several years, are likely to see their earnings hindered when they resume working. According to Jenkins, the primary reason women suffer the brunt of divorce’s financial burdens is that during the marriage, they are more likely than men to cease working so as to raise kids. “The key differences are not between men and women, but between fathers and mothers,” he told The Guardian.

Not to mention, divorce proceedings in themselves can pose a severe financial burden. According to Divorce Magazine, a trade publication, the cost of divorce varies significantly, from as little as $8,500 to well over $100,000. These burdens tend to fall disproportionately on women, and, in its usual way, the market has recognized that: multiple firms have started providing loans, some of them for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to women so that they can hire skilled lawyers to properly argue their case in court.

A General Recommendation titled “Economic Consequences of Marriage, Family Relations, and their Dissolution,” which focuses on protecting women’s equal rights to property once their marriage ends — either due to divorce or death of their spouses was adopted by the CEDAW, or the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2013.

“[I]f they can no longer depend on their husbands for financial support and face discriminatory family laws that may force women out of their homes, they are at an increased risk of falling into the cycle of poverty,” the Committee stated.

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a CEDAW expert was contributed to framing General Recommendation, further noted that “States must fully acknowledge the many forms of women’s contribution to the economic well-being of their families and see to it that this contribution is fully recognized when the relationship ends.”

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