Dr. Kulbhushan Kumar v. Raj Kumari

What the court was looking at

The marriage had run 25 years by the time it reached court, which puts it in the over 15 years bracket. There was one child, so child maintenance sat alongside the wife's own claim. The husband was described as reader in medicine.

What the court held

Why it is still cited

This is the origin of the proportion every later judgement cites. Kalyan Dey Chowdhury (2017) rests on it, and so does most of what a magistrate will assume in 2026.

How it gets misread

The point of interest

Original 25% rule.

How it fits the framework

Since Rajnesh v. Neha in 2020, every maintenance order in India is meant to work through the same list of factors: the standard of living the marriage ran at, what the applicant reasonably needs, whether she is qualified and earning, and whether she gave up work for the family. A judgement from 1970 was decided before that list was written down, but the reasoning behind it is the reasoning courts had been applying for decades. There is a fuller account in how maintenance is calculated.

Judgements near this one

Ranked by court, then by income bracket and marriage length rather than by date, so the comparison is with cases a court would actually treat as similar. Every row links to its own page.