Maintenance and alimony: how courts actually decide

The first thing to know is that there is no formula. No percentage of salary, no multiple of income, no table. Anyone who gives you a confident number without seeing both sides' finances is guessing, and guesses are what make settlements collapse later.

What exists instead is a set of factors, a mandatory disclosure, and a body of practice.

Which provision you are under

Several run in parallel, and the same facts can support more than one claim.

Provision	What it does
Sections 24 and 25, Hindu Marriage Act	Maintenance while the case runs (s.24), and permanent alimony at or after the decree (s.25)
Section 144, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023	The summary remedy, formerly section 125 CrPC — maintenance for a wife, children and parents who cannot maintain themselves
Section 20, Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005	Monetary relief, including maintenance, in a DV proceeding
Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956	A wife's right to be maintained by her husband

Different personal laws provide their own routes. Which one is right depends on facts, speed and what else is running.

What a court weighs

From the statutes and from Rajnesh v. Neha (2020), in which the Supreme Court laid down guidelines for maintenance across every provision, the factors are broadly:

The income and earning capacity of both parties, not merely what each currently earns
The standard of living during the marriage
Reasonable needs of the claimant and of any children
Qualifications and employment status of both, and whether the claimant gave up work or a career during the marriage
Dependants and liabilities on both sides, including loans actually being serviced
Whether the claimant has independent income or assets
The length of the marriage
Age and health of both parties
Maintenance of children, including education

Two of these do more work than people expect. Earning capacity matters, not only present earnings — a spouse who leaves a job during proceedings does not thereby reduce what they are asked to pay. And giving up a career during the marriage weighs genuinely on the claimant's side.

Both sides file their finances

Rajnesh made an affidavit of disclosure of assets and liabilities mandatory from both parties in every maintenance proceeding across India. Income, assets, liabilities, dependants, expenses.

This matters more than any argument. Maintenance is decided largely on those two affidavits, so the quality of yours — complete, documented, consistent with your returns and statements — is most of the outcome. An affidavit that understates income and is then contradicted by a bank statement damages everything else you say in the matter.

From when, and for how long

Rajnesh also settled that maintenance is ordinarily awarded from the date of the application, not the date of the order. Where a matter takes two years, that difference is large, and it is why arrears are often the bigger number.

Maintenance may be monthly, or a one-time lump sum in full and final settlement. Which suits you is a real decision: a lump sum ends the relationship cleanly and removes the risk of default, but it has to be affordable at once. Monthly keeps a tie between you for years and carries enforcement risk. Couples settling by consent choose lump sums more often than contested matters end in them.

Maintenance for children is separate

A child's right to be maintained is the child's, not the spouse's. It does not disappear because the parents settle between themselves, and a court will look at what is provided for children even in a consent settlement. Education costs are ordinarily dealt with separately from monthly maintenance, and the settlement should say who pays what, and when.

In a mutual consent divorce you are not asking a court to decide maintenance — you are telling it what you have agreed. The court reads the settlement to satisfy itself that the agreement is genuine and not unconscionable.

So write it properly:

The figure, in words and numerals
The mode — bank transfer to a named account
The dates — by the 7th of each month, or on or before a stated date for a lump sum
The period — until a stated date or event
What it covers, and what is dealt with separately, such as school fees
What happens on default

"The parties have agreed on maintenance" is not a term. It is the sentence that sends a settlement to mediation.

What to do next

Before you negotiate, work out the range: the maintenance estimator takes both incomes and produces what courts have been working within.

When you are ready to write it into a settlement that will hold, a guided session is where that gets drafted for your own court.