An unpaid maintenance order is not a dead letter, though it does require you to go back to court. The remedy depends on which statute the order came under.
Orders under Section 144 BNSS (formerly 125 CrPC)
Apply to the Magistrate for recovery of arrears. The court can issue a warrant for levying the amount as if it were a fine, and if the amount still remains unpaid, can sentence the defaulter to imprisonment for a term that may extend to one month for each month of default. The application must ordinarily be made within one year of the amount falling due, so do not let arrears pile up for years before acting.
That one year proviso is the single most damaging trap in this area. It runs separately for each month's instalment, so on an order made three years ago the older instalments may already be beyond the warrant route while the last twelve months are not. The practical answer is to file the recovery application as soon as two or three months have been missed and to keep filing, rather than waiting until the total is large enough to feel worth the trouble.
Section 147 BNSS then makes the order portable: a copy of the order is given free to the person in whose favour it is made, and it may be enforced by any Magistrate in any place where the defaulter happens to be, once that Magistrate is satisfied about identity and non-payment. A husband who leaves Bengaluru for another state has not escaped the order; you take a certified copy to the Magistrate where he now is. Section 146 works the other way and lets him apply to alter the allowance on proof of a genuine change in circumstances, which is the application you should expect in response.
Orders under the Hindu Marriage Act or a decree
File an execution petition. The executing court can attach and sell property, attach bank accounts, and order attachment of salary, which in practice is the fastest and most effective method where the defaulter is in employment. It can also order arrest and civil detention where default is wilful and the means exist.
Execution is governed by Order 21 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and the modes worth naming in the petition are attachment and sale of immovable property, attachment of movables, attachment of the salary payable by the employer, a garnishee direction to a bank or a tenant to pay into court, and arrest and detention. Section 60 of the Code decides what can be attached at all and exempts certain categories, including a part of a salary, so a salary attachment reaches the balance rather than the whole. Execution also has its own outer time limit, which is why an old decree cannot simply be picked up a decade later; the guide on execution of a decree and recovering money after winning sets out the limitation position and the Order 21 steps in sequence.
Orders under the Domestic Violence Act
Breach of a monetary relief order made under the PWDVA can be pursued as an offence under Section 31 of that Act, and the Magistrate can also direct the employer to deduct the amount from salary.
The salary route has an express statutory home here. Section 20(6) of that Act allows the Magistrate, where the respondent has failed to pay, to direct his employer or a debtor to pay a portion of his wages, salary or of the debt due to him directly to you or into court. "A debtor" is the limb that works against a self-employed respondent: a tenant paying him rent, or a customer who owes him money, can be directed to pay you instead. Breach of a protection order is separately punishable with imprisonment up to one year, a fine up to twenty thousand rupees, or both, and is to be tried as far as practicable by the same Magistrate who made the order.
In my experience, an application for attachment of salary addressed to the employer changes behaviour quicker than any other step, because it makes the default visible at work. Where the spouse is self-employed, attachment of a bank account or of rent receivable does the same job.
Practical steps before you file
- Prepare a month-by-month statement of what was due, what was paid, and the running balance. Courts want arithmetic, not adjectives.
- Keep bank records showing non-receipt.
- Identify assets: employer name, bank, property, vehicle. Execution succeeds or fails on knowing what to attach.
- Collect the identifiers that make attachment possible: PAN, the employer's registered address and the HR or payroll contact, the bank and branch with the account number if you have it, the survey or khata number of any property, and the vehicle registration. An execution application that names the asset is acted on; one that asks the court to find the assets is adjourned.
- Certified copy of the order you are enforcing, and proof of its service on the defaulter. Enforcement stalls surprisingly often on the absence of one of those two documents.
| Order under | Enforcement route | Coercive power |
|---|---|---|
| Section 144 BNSS | Application to the Magistrate who passed it | Warrant for levy of the amount, and sentence for each month unpaid |
| Hindu Marriage Act decree or order | Execution in the court that passed it | Attachment and sale, garnishee, arrest and detention |
| Domestic Violence Act, Section 20 | Application to the Magistrate | Breach of a protection order is itself an offence |
| Any of the above, salaried respondent | Direction for deduction at source from salary | Employer directed to remit |
Which court, and how the choice is made
You go back to the court that passed the order, and in Bengaluru that means the Family Court at Nyaya Degula for a Section 24 or Section 25 order or a decree, and the same court or the Magistrate for a Section 144 BNSS order, depending on where it was made. Where the defaulter has moved, a BNSS maintenance order can be enforced by the Magistrate wherever he now is, and a decree can be transferred for execution to the court where his property or employment lies. That transfer application is often the fastest single step in the whole exercise, and it is worth making at the outset instead of trying twice in the wrong place first.
One thing to avoid, however tempting: do not respond to non-payment by stopping access to the children. The two are legally unconnected, courts treat the linkage very badly, and it converts a straightforward recovery in which you are entirely in the right into a contested dispute in which you are not.