The Assets and Liabilities Affidavit Every Maintenance Case Now Needs

Since 4 November 2020, no court in India is supposed to fix maintenance until both sides have filed a sworn affidavit of assets and liabilities. The Supreme Court made that affidavit compulsory in Rajnesh v. Neha and annexed three ready-made formats to the judgment itself. So when people ask about the correct maintenance affidavit format India uses, the answer is narrow: it is Enclosure I, II or III of that judgment, adapted only to the extent the court permits.

This is not a technicality that quietly died. In November 2023 the Supreme Court in Aditi alias Mithi v. Jitesh Sharma set aside a maintenance order because the record did not show these affidavits had been filed, and directed the Secretary General to re-circulate Rajnesh to every High Court, every judicial officer and the judicial academies. High Courts have since pushed the same message down to trial courts.

Why the maintenance affidavit format India follows became compulsory

Maintenance litigation has a structural problem. The person paying knows exactly what he or she earns. The person claiming usually does not, and has no realistic way to prove it. Courts filled that gap by guessing, and the guesses ranged widely on identical facts. A salaried respondent with a payslip was pinned down; a self-employed respondent with cash income was not.

In Rajnesh v. Neha, a bench of Justice Indu Malhotra and Justice R. Subhash Reddy used Article 142 to impose a uniform disclosure regime. The reasoning was practical. If both parties swear to their income, assets, liabilities, dependants and existing maintenance obligations at the outset, the court has an objective record, cross-examination has something to bite on, and the ritual of claiming to earn nothing while running a business becomes a documented statement with consequences attached.

Key takeaway. The affidavit is not a formality attached to your petition. It is evidence on oath, filed before the merits are heard, and it fixes the financial version you will be held to for the rest of the case.

Where the disclosure requirement comes from, and how firmly it is enforced.

The three enclosures and which one applies to you

The judgment annexes three distinct formats. Choosing the wrong one is a common filing defect.

Most urban litigants file Enclosure I. A party with both salary and agricultural income should file Enclosure I and disclose the holding under the assets heading rather than switch formats. Courts may modify the format to suit the exigencies of a case, so a good affidavit adds rows without deleting the Supreme Court's headings.

What Enclosure I actually asks for

Practitioners who have only skimmed the format tend to underestimate it. Enclosure I runs through eleven lettered parts, and several of them require documents, not assertions.

• Parts A to E, the domestic picture. Qualifications, whose house you live in, dates of marriage and separation, monthly expenses, every past or pending maintenance proceeding and whether those orders were complied with, dependants and their own income, disability or serious illness backed by medical records, and each child's food, medical, school and coaching costs.
• Part F, income. Employer, designation and monthly income, with pay slips for government servants and an employer certificate plus Form 16 for the private sector, perquisites, income tax returns for one year before marriage, one year before separation and at the time of the application, income from rent, interest, dividends and capital gains, and bank statements of all accounts for three years.
• Parts G and H, assets and liabilities. Self-acquired, joint and ancestral property, investments, rent, jewellery acquired during or after marriage, any alienation of property during the subsistence of the marriage with reasons, and against that, loans, mortgages, EMIs and the purpose and repayment history of each borrowing.
• Part I, self-employed and business persons. Nature of the activity, the legal vehicle used, share of profit and loss in a partnership, net income, business liabilities, the last audited balance sheet and the firm's last return.
• Parts J and K, the other side and overseas elements. What you know on information and belief about the other spouse's occupation, income, accommodation, assets and liabilities; and where either party lives abroad, citizenship, foreign currency income backed by an employer letter or bank statement, and foreign expenditure and tax liability.

Part F and Part G are where the real work lies. Three years of bank statements across all accounts, three sets of income tax returns and a Form 16 are not optional attachments. Filing without them invites an application for better particulars and, more damagingly, an inference.

Common mistake. Filing a bare affidavit that answers the headings with "not applicable" or "will be produced later". Once you swear that you have made a full and accurate disclosure, producing a suppressed account or property later is not a correction. It is an admission of a false verification.

The declaration carries criminal exposure

Enclosure I ends with a declaration that the disclosure is full and accurate, an undertaking to report any material change, and an acknowledgement that a false statement may amount to contempt and to offences relating to false declarations and false claims in court. The judgment framed that warning by reference to the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Those provisions now sit in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

The Court directed that where false statements and misrepresentations are made, the court may consider perjury proceedings and contempt. In practice a judge is unlikely to launch a perjury complaint over a rounding error, but far more likely to draw an adverse inference on quantum, which usually costs the defaulting party more than the prosecution would have.

How the affidavit is filed, step by step

1. Identify the correct enclosure. For most urban and salaried litigants this is Enclosure I. Agricultural income takes Enclosure II; proceedings in Meghalaya take Enclosure III.
2. Collect the documents before drafting: salary certificate or Form 16, returns for the three specified periods, three years of bank statements for all accounts, property documents, loan sanction letters and EMI schedules, school fee receipts, and medical records where health is in issue.
3. Draft a concise application. Rajnesh asks for limited pleadings in the application itself, with the financial detail carried by the affidavit.
4. Complete every heading. Where one genuinely does not apply, say why in a line instead of leaving it blank.
5. Swear and notarise the affidavit and file it with the application and a document list.
6. Serve the respondent. The respondent must file a reply with his or her own affidavit of disclosure within a maximum of four weeks. The Supreme Court directed that courts should not grant more than two opportunities for this.
7. If a disclosure is disputed, do not simply argue about it. Seek discovery and interrogatories under Order XI of the Code of Civil Procedure, or invite the court to use its power to put questions and order production under Section 165 of the Indian Evidence Act, now Section 168 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
8. Press for a decision on interim maintenance. Rajnesh contemplates disposal within about four to six months of the affidavits being filed, and Section 144 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 sets an outer marker of sixty days from service of notice for interim maintenance in that forum.
9. File a supplementary or amended affidavit if your income, employment or liabilities change materially. The undertaking in the declaration requires it.

Deadline warning. Four weeks for the respondent's reply affidavit and a maximum of two opportunities is a direction, not a courtesy. A respondent who lets both opportunities lapse risks the court proceeding on the applicant's affidavit alone.

The clocks that run once the affidavit is on record.

One affidavit, many forums

A separated couple can have maintenance claims running in three or four places at once. The affidavit applies across all of them, and Part B is what stops a party collecting the same relief twice.

Where successive claims are made under different statutes, the Court directed that the later court consider an adjustment or set-off of what was already awarded, that the applicant is under a mandatory duty to disclose the earlier proceeding and orders, and that any change to an earlier order be sought in that same proceeding. Our note on maintenance under Section 125 covers the magistrate's jurisdiction, and the article on interim maintenance in divorce proceedings deals with the pendente lite stage.

How the affidavit feeds into quantum

The affidavit is the input. Quantum is the output. Rajnesh listed the criteria the court must weigh, and the Supreme Court restated them in July 2024 in Kiran Jyot Maini v. Anish Pramod Patel while fixing a one-time permanent alimony settlement. The recurring factors are the status of the parties, the reasonable needs of the claimant and the children, qualifications and employment status, whether the claimant has independent income sufficient for the standard of living enjoyed in the matrimonial home, career sacrifices made for family responsibilities, litigation costs for a non-working spouse, and the paying spouse's actual income, reasonable expenses and other obligations. The award should not be penal; the purpose is a decent standard of living.

Two further directions matter to the arithmetic. Maintenance is awarded from the date of filing the application, not the date of the order, so every month of delay accrues arrears. For enforcement, the Court pointed to Section 28A of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, Section 20(6) of the Domestic Violence Act and Section 128 CrPC, now Section 147 BNSS, together with execution as a money decree under Sections 51, 55, 58 and 60 read with Order XXI of the Code of Civil Procedure. Striking off a defaulting respondent's defence is a last resort, reserved for wilful and contumacious default.

Costs and realistic timelines

These are indicative only and vary with the district and the complexity of the disclosure. Notarisation is nominal, usually a few hundred rupees. Court fees on a maintenance application before a magistrate are small, and matrimonial petitions attract modest fixed fees that differ by state. The real cost sits in assembling the disclosure: certified returns, three years of bank statements, encumbrance certificates and valuation inputs, plus professional fees for an affidavit that will survive cross-examination.

The directions contemplate four weeks for the reply affidavit and roughly four to six months for disposal of the interim maintenance application once affidavits are on record. Contested cases with disputed business income take longer, because discovery adds a round. Nothing here should be read as a prediction about any particular case.

A practitioner's note

The part most often mishandled is Part J, the disclosure about the other spouse. Litigants either leave it blank because they think they cannot prove anything, or they fill it with speculation. Neither helps. Part J is the place to record what you actually know and can point to: the name of the firm, a GST number seen on an invoice, a vehicle registered in the other party's name, the school a child attends, the rental income from a shop you lived above. That material goes in on information and belief, and the verification clause allows exactly that distinction. Set out concretely, it gives the court a reason to order discovery. Left blank, it says there is nothing to look for. Further reading on tracing undisclosed wealth is in our piece on hidden assets in divorce, and our work in this area is described on the family and divorce law page.

Related guides and where to get help

If this is a live problem rather than background reading, our family and divorce law practice handles these matters from Bengaluru, including for clients who cannot attend court in person. These guides go deeper on the neighbouring questions:

• Can a Working Wife Claim Maintenance in India?
• Maintenance for Parents and Senior Citizens in India
• Does a Second Wife Have Maintenance Rights in India?

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is general information on the law as it stands and is not legal advice. The application of these directions depends on the facts of each case and on the practice of the court where the matter is filed.