Do matrimonial laws REALLY FAVOR WOMEN?

Laws are definitely gender biased and in favor of women but the issues which you have raised have more to do with implementation of those law rather than the laws itself.

then if the laws are poorly implemented,we shud not be saying they favor women

..........becoz they have a harder time taking rounds of courts for years together,besides facing verbal n emotional abuses from their own family members and society who mostly feel that the gal solely is responsible for breaking her home.........

Precisely speaking laws are a bit biased in favor of women. But judiciary specially higher levels have soft corner for women. they are too old people to realise that society has changed a lot and women dont need any favour. they need equal rights and respect only.

both the parties have hard time taking round of courts so equal harassment and by the way why the husband is considered as free ATM machine who has to take care of wife, children etc. Why do wifes ask for maintenance? Both have equal responsibities and there is no parameter to measure desertion. Everybody has his right to decide with whom he/she wants to live and no law can force him/her to live with anyone who has his/her life hell. So why ask for maintenance and go to courts. Live your own life your own way. 

MARRIAGE IS A legalised prostitution and u have to pay for the rental of machine.

Dear sir (mr prabhakar) if husband is really jobless why he is ordered to pay maintenance u/s 24 , while if wife is jobless she gets maintenance. please explain why?

"Very a few women are economically empowered and are ascertaining their rights."


See and feel - visit rural / urban areas then see contemporary India you will see women much better and empowered lot and infact this attitude that women are weaker is giving them bad name. Let us wake up and see around with wide open eyes. Today a women when steps into a court of law she files on an average 4 cases against her husband and family and on an average men file only one case that also if the couple have a child otherwise forget even that 1 custody case. Who benefits the most out of this empowerment and ascertaining rights minus duties ! If one talks of rights then the next word comes is called duties. Give all the right to a women which I per se will not mind but design a society on models of who will perform all the duties then :-)



"Men themselves describing as ATM Machines, treating the better half prostitutes etc."

When a women is misguided by certain sections of professions they then start treating men as ATM machines and men don't describe themselves as ATM Machines before that, worse half starts knocking minimum 4 courts for SOWRY which is their expression of prostitution not a men's branding before that.

Tell me in which country / society after marriage a wife does not join matrimonial home ? In India we sugar quoted and say 'shared house hold' and or undefined 'matrimonial home' but in the lands from where all these women centric laws are being imported they damn care about this fixation of words passionately called again and again in courts as 'matrimonial home' Obviously a women after marriage will not be living in a caravan or on roads. If she has joined matrimonial home that does not mean that a husband and or his family has forced her to leave all her things behind or she was told to be excommunicated from her own family. All over time and again wife's go back home to meet their part of the family and branding it selectively is not right way to plead a picture of a Indian wife.

A husband has not only to listen to his old folks but also to his wife and his child as bread, medicine and shelter provider. Does a wife even listens to his own husband forget the dustbins (FIL / MIL) or kid out of the wedlock !. Project the clear gender picture and don't make only women SOWRY figures. Today a women does not want to be branded that way so why brand her to be compassionate / humane / full of motherhood  a lollipop devi figure etc etc. Is Late Raja Ravi Verma born again here amidst us in the guise of a contemporary Indian Women kya ? 

Maintenance sections

A  die hard Indian men will definitely ask for equity before law be it S. 24 HMA or S. 125 CrPC and even under DVA. It is not that since S. 24 HMA is gender neutral so to speak men have cupid eyes for only this section. The irony is that Indian Courts sees two strong legs with two strong hands of a Indian male to be earning capacity whereas Indian Courts eyes does not go anywhere else in case of incapaciated Indian Women other than ........ Many a women don't even ask maint. and they only ask for divorce so let us not put all eggs in same basket an portray Indian women to be really downtrodden and so on so forth. They have brains too and they damn well use and misuse them for and against a Indian man.

With respect I always wanted to know how to address you like Sh. or Ms. as from your profile surname and then looking at your pic it does not give a clue on correct way to address you which I really want to address you correctly, kindly tweak me.

Rgds.   

@ Aishwarya


Summing an answer to your main post my views are that you are talking about two strata of Indian women vis a vis implementation of Law by various agencies.


1. The rural strata does not mostly approach city courts as most of the compromise happens at panchayat level which has women reservation representative heads too. You may bring in hard core stats of rural women getting justice at panchayat level or not with case studies we will discuss further but before that let us not include them into generic discussion to fudge records and then end it saying as title of your post.


2. The urban strata is the most vulnerable one which is misguided by certain professions clubbed with their self acquired independence. Being in job or jobless here is immaterial bze once you are misguided then education and earning independent income does not play much role other than 'ego to file multiple maint. cases for the same cause of action'.

3. Legal Aid Service was instituted for poor and jobless Indian women and if I approach them though being out of job they have twice kicked me on my butt and now-a-days there is no upper income limit to seek free legal aid by an Indian Women. The quality of such aid is a question mark so let us not club justice delivery with such implementation part and then brand it at the end like title of your post. However one can question the same mechanism on their quality but how many of you readers have done such questioning till date to say as title of this post !

4. Justice delivery system will always be criticized by both sections; who get early justice and or who get delayed justice and there is nothing called no justice at the end of this back tunnel. To you definition of justice will be totally different than my interpretation of justice. What lacks here is implementation of delivery system. A empowered urban women can very well take the task of questioning the justice delivery system and for that she doe not need to be home tutored or in job or educated. Certain PIL's some years ago were admitted with handwritten postcards by same Indian Women so what we criticizing here!.

5.Today in internet penetration age we hear equal voice of home breaking stories from both women as well as from husbands. A dog biting a man is not news but a man biting a dog becomes a news ! Women stories readers empathies because down growing up years they have been told to patronise women but when a men cries that he does not want his matrimony to be broken people laugh and whimp at him. So it is not right to say that it is only women who care much more about their matrimony.

6. In short, I will say matrimonial laws are perfect it is the implementation part in assistance with Lawyers, Police and Judiciary which is desirable and saying that women don't get justice is wrong assumptions. You take 100 cases of any trial court and you will notice that if a maint case is put by a women she gets maint. (whatever the amount) within 6 months on an average irrespective if husband is homeless / jobless but what Jusitce sees is that he has two legs and two hands !. A women now a days puts a DV case she gets residence rights on an average within 3 months that also prime facie leave aside evidence or trial of a suit. So why ask a question as in your title?

Educate the professional pleaders first on morality / ethics and professionalism. Then take to task Police instead of internet crying wolf in armchair writings. Further question the implementation part to Judiciary, all these system will come into right place. Shall we try these instead of saying do matrimonial law really favour women?


If it does not favour a Indian women then whom it is favouring is it the pleaders or police or Judges then which is question for another forum post it may sound so :-)

Rgds

bah....... bah.......

VERY INTERESTING; PLEASE CARRY ON.

AM WAITING FOR THE URGUEMENT OF MS. AVINASH KAUR.

Dear Prabhakar,

Why wife needs to sacrifice her father mother by leaving her parents home. She can always live with her parents and after death of her parents she can marry and can decide where to live.

Tomorrow you may say that wife has to leave live-in-relation friend and has to leave to husband house.

I think now you understand what is the problem. After marriage what to do and where to do things should be discussed by each and has go accordingly.

Please think if mother and sister of family adopts this logic how bad it is for the family of any family makes relation ship with this family.

Aishwariya, you're right in everything you have said.  You look as if you speak from experience.  All women get from law is frustration and further depression.  Even the so called pro-women lawyers who are part of all kinds of women committees to show they are for women and their welfare, when they get a man's case where they know the man is in the wrong will take up his case against the woman just for the money.  Out goes all rightness.  And if it is the woman's lawyer, even fully knowing how harrassed the woman has been she will be further harrassed by the legal system and the lawyers.  The favourism is not  only in paper but is now being spread by the men folks like fire on the internet.  I think all women should unite and show the real picture otherwise the times to come are going to be even worse for women.  By giving a woman another label as 'educated and working', the man exploits the woman even further and she is even in a worse state than the house wife.  why do you think therefore the first advice a lawyer gives a woman is to give up her job while she is fighting the legal battle.  The law just sees that she is working and is educated to support herself even if it is just a bare minimum as compared to her husband.  The law refuses to see how for no fault of hers she has lost everything and is made to run pillar to post, frustrated, depressed whereas the husband flaunts his wealth to every single woman and enjoys his bachelorhood.   

I appreciate mr. Prabhakar's views. While fully agreeing with him, I would like to bring in equity aspect in delivery of justice. There is a difference between equity and equality. Equity is a process of being fair towards the goal of equality, in this case gender equality. Now if someone says same rights and responsibilites exist for women ans men, I do not agree. A woman is twice or thrice burdened than man. She goes for work, looks after the household chores, take care of the children..that's why many women's CV do not register linear growth but remain patchy. How many men shares equally with their working wives household chores and child care. Even if there is a maid to help, the house management remain the primary task of women. Now take a case of woman who has spent the prime years of her life in managing the household and have sacrificed her job prospects for bringing up children--a full time work in itself. Now this woman remain most of the time in her matrimonial home and there is no interference from her parents. So the child grows, menwhile the husband climbs up the corporate ladder, hardly coming home because that would take away his time from job and he has loads of work which has to finish in time. Once he is strong in his position, and knows wife has grown old and may be susceptible to health problems, he sends the divorce notice. The wife sometimes works, no one give her work in an MNC in the country where age biases would rule the roost and anyways she has restricted mobility as still the child requires her full attention. This is just a case to show that men and women are not at a level playing field. A poor well qualified man can look forward to a great career, because he can focus on his work, and only his work..a mother cant do it. Now do'nt quote some stry cases where women have abandoned their  child/ren. On the whole this is the reality of our male dominated society that now they want a working wife but her roles at home have not changed,as she still have to rish from her work and do the household chores. No this non cash activity which is a full time work....what is the compensation or valuation for it. Internationally now these questions are being asked. Have you read the International  treaty CEDAW to which India is a signatory? When a woman asks for compensation or alimony these opportunity costs have to be factored in...we call it meeting the equity concern. Equality is not uniformity in treatment but to meet justice in the context of differential life situations, differential gender roles and responsibilities( where women are assigned double work), double work burden in the case of a working woman who is denied maintenance or compensation. Demanding justice is not exploitation. There is so much of rage against women because they have started asking for their space and started questioning the systemic discrimination. They are historically disadvantaged and for that reason if there are some women sensitive laws they are meeting the requirement of gender equity to finally pave the way for equality between women and men. 

The way women is addressed in this forum reflects what anger and hatred she has to face to assert her existence and dignity. This is bound to happen in a world where women are juggling with double roles but men have not taken up sharing the household responsibilities. Exceptions are always there, so I am not taking some particular case or cases. Hence I am not expecting any angry reply in a personal manner, because my reply is not personal but in the spirit of discussing a topic which is very interesting as well as of vital importance.

RG

Renuka,

I agree that the points mentined by you has weightage and every husband should value the house hold work carried out by wifes.

However, please also consider below points

1) Belive it or not but every husband takes his heart out to earn more and more for his family so that Wife and children can sleep in A.C Bedroom, Roam in A.C Car, go on shopping, wear ornaments and the list is very large. MEN have very limited expenses which they actually do for themselves.

2) I am not talking about all but most wifes tries to control Husband's finances and wishes that husband should not support his parents, brothers, sisters when their hour of need financially - But at the same time wants husband to purchase lavish gifts for her parents, relatives.

3) Finally, If wife has any issues or has been really harrased then she has every right to ask for justice but on the factual allegations......Why in every 498a, DV, CrPC 125 etc cases....they accuse all (most) of the husband's family members for mentally, physically harrasing her for dowry etc since so many years.....and has all kind of defaming words against husband and in-laws that they are drunkers (most common).

4) No Men gets afraid of any harm to himself (physical/financial/social etc.) but it can't tolerate exteme and false allegation against his old parents and other blood relatives who might even not have stayed with the wife for a day.

5) Even after that when Men says that come back for the sake of children (Belive me no MEN would continue loving her wife once such cases have been filed but because of his love for the children he would still like to continue with such marraige)....but when he tries for compromise wife/in-laws asks for huge some of money either for divorce or for reconciliation....This is fact and you can take whatever figure you want to from various lawyers and they would tell you how settlements takes place. Now here Wife asks for money and doesn't care about child's welfare.