Can Parents Claim Maintenance from Their Children?

An individual to carry on with an honourable life requires essential conveniences like food, garments, shelter and other fundamental prerequisites. It is the ethical obligation of a man to give the previously mentioned enhancements to his significant other, parents and kids in the type of maintenance. Maintenance is the way toward keeping up or safeguarding somebody. Before 1973, there was no arrangement for maintenance of parents under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Be that as it may, the arrangement for maintenance was presented in without precedent for Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in 1973.

Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 was instituted to give a powerful solution for the ignored people to look for maintenance. Anyway in 2007, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act was passed which gives arrangements to maintenance to help old guardians and senior residents. Guardians can guarantee maintenance either under Section 125 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 or under Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. In any case, they can’t guarantee maintenance under both the demonstrations.

Firstly, we should ask What is Maintenance? It is defined in Section 2(b) of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 as “maintenance includes provision for food, clothing, residence and medical attendance and treatment.”

Now, who can guarantee Maintenance under the Act?

Under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 the maintenance can be guaranteed by parents, grandparents and senior residents.

Guardians – With the end goal of this demonstration Parents include father or mother whether natural, supportive or stepfather or stepmother. Anyway, it is relevant to specify here that it isn’t the necessity of the Act that the parents ought to be senior residents.

Great Parents – Grandparents incorporates both maternal and fatherly grandparents.

Conditions to guarantee Maintenance – The condition preceding guaranteeing maintenance by the previously mentioned individuals under this Act is that the people must be not able to keep up themselves from their own profit.

Who is at risk to pay Maintenance?

Grown-up Children if there should be an occurrence of Parents and grown-up grand kids in the event of grandparents, both male and female, are mindful/at risk to pay maintenance to guardians and grandparents.

In the event that the parents or senior residents don’t have any youngsters or grand kids, they can guarantee maintenance from their family members. The conditions under which guardians and senior residents can guarantee maintenance from family members are as per the following:

1. The relative must be a significant.
2. The relative ought to have adequate intends to give maintenance.
3. The relative ought to either be having the property of the senior residents or they will acquire the property after the demise of senior resident.
4. On the off chance that there is more than one family member, who is probably going to acquire the property of the senior resident, at that point maintenance must be paid by family members in relation to their legacy of the property.

Instructions to apply for Maintenance

1. An application can be made under Section 4 of the Act, by a senior resident or parent to the council comprised for settling maintenance guarantees by giving subtleties of the individual from whom maintenance is requested.
2. Maintenance procedures might be started against the predefined kid/relative in any area where such resident lives.
3. On the off chance that any individual is unable to make an application, at that point some other individual or enlisted deliberate association approved by him/her can make the application.
4. The council will at that point issue a notification to the youngsters/family members, conducts hearings and articulate a maintenance request.
5. In the event that there is a disappointment in making the instalment of maintenance as requested by the court without an adequate purpose behind a quarter of a year after its due date, the senior resident or guardians, by and large, can move toward the council once more.
6. If there should arise an occurrence of such defer the youngsters/family members are culpable with fine or detainment up to one month which may stretch out till the instalment is made.
7. The demonstration gives that no gathering to a procedure before the Maintenance Tribunal will be spoken to by a legal counsellor. Be that as it may, guardians or senior residents can profit the administrations of the State Government designated Maintenance official to speak to the gatherings during the procedures before the Maintenance Tribunal.

The commitment of kids to maintain their parents under Personal Laws

Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 –

The Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 is the first close to home law rule in Quite a while, which forces a commitment on the kids to keep up their folks. The commitment to keep up guardians isn’t kept to children just, even the girls have an equivalent commitment/obligation to keep up their folks. It is to be remembered that guardians who are monetarily unfit to keep up themselves from any source, just they are qualified to look for maintenance under this demonstration.

As per Section 20 of Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 it is the commitment of kids to keep up their matured weak parents (youngsters here incorporate real just as ill-conceived). The term ‘youngsters’ under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 does exclude grandson and granddaughter. The risk to keep up guardians is close to home and isn’t reliant on the ownership of property (just like the instance of procedures under Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act) and this commitment stops with the demise of the individual subject to keep up.

Muslim Law –

Under the Islamic standards, if the kids reserve a privilege to be kept up by their parents, they likewise have a relating obligation to give maintenance to their folks. Rules of Muslim Law, identifying with the maintenance of guardians are expressed as under:

1. The children will undoubtedly keep up their parents just in the event that they are monetarily solid and the guardians are poor. At the end of the day, just those parents who are in need are qualified to get maintenance from their youngsters.
2. Both the child and little girl have an equivalent obligation to keep up their parents. Their duty to keep up the guardians is joint and equivalent. Be that as it may, on the off chance that one youngster is poor and the other is in simple conditions, at that point the obligation to keep up parents lies on the kid who is in simple conditions.
3. Anyway, a child, however poor and in stressed conditions, will undoubtedly keep up his mom, just on the off chance that she is poor. In other cases if a child is poor however is procuring something for its employees, he will undoubtedly bolster his poor dad who wins nothing.
4. On the off chance that the kid is in a place that he/she can just help one of its parents, consistently the mother gets need over dad.
5. On the off chance that in the event that the kids can’t bolster their parents independently, they might be constrained to take their folks with them and to live respectively.
6. Under Muslim law, the child will undoubtedly keep up his stepmother.

Christian and Parsi Law –

The Christians and Parsi’s have no close to home laws accommodating maintenance for the guardians. Parents who look for maintenance from their kids need to apply under arrangements of the Code of Criminal Procedure or Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act.

Conclusion

The older, as an unmistakable gathering of the total population, are qualified for an agreeable and secure condition with their requirements tended to. In the ongoing occasions, with the presentation of Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, the idea of maintenance for older has been given a wide extension as it incorporates parents as well as even grandparents and childless parents too. As per me, recording an application under the previously mentioned Act for guaranteeing maintenance is the best alternative accessible when contrasted with documenting an application under Cr. P.C or individual laws.

This Article is Authored by Kanya Saluja, 1st Year, B.Com. LLB Student of Institute of Law, Nirma University.

Also Read – Can A Parent Sue His Son For Maintenance?