Madhya Pradesh HC: a husband can't raise 'wrong court' for the first time after losing a maintenance case

The Madhya Pradesh High Court, Jabalpur, upheld a Rs. 3,000 monthly maintenance order for a wife after her husband tried, years into the case, to argue that the Family Court which passed it never had jurisdiction to hear it at all. The couple married in May 2017, and the wife left the matrimonial home in February 2018; she then applied for maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure before the Family Court at Mandla. Only after losing did the husband argue, in this revision, that since neither he nor his wife lived within the court's local limits under Section 126, the case ought to have gone to the Gram Nyayalaya instead, and that the Family Court's order was therefore a nullity.

Justice Dwarka Dhish Bansal rejected the argument, holding that an objection to a court's territorial jurisdiction cannot be raised for the first time in revision if it was never raised at trial; the husband had filed his reply and contested the case on merits without a whisper of protest about jurisdiction. The Court described Section 125 as beneficiary legislation that should not be lost to a technical, belatedly-raised objection, and, weighing the husband's financial status, found nothing wrong with the modest maintenance amount awarded. The revision was dismissed and the order stands.