Madhya Pradesh High Court Allows Maternal Grandmother To Seek Maintenance For Minor Child

Maintenance in family matters is a welfare-oriented legal right. In a recent judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, this principle was reinforced when Justice Dwarka Dhish Bansal held that a maternal grandmother, who is the de facto caregiver of a minor child, can seek interim maintenance on the child’s behalf under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The court allowed her to seek maintenance without her formal appointment as a legal guardian, setting aside the dismissal order passed by the Family Court. The Family Court had dismissed the interim maintenance application in September 2022.

The petitioner in this case is the minor girl, on whose behalf her grandmother filed the case as her next friend. The girl was born on September 26, 2015. Her mother died in 2018 due to an illness three years later. The girl’s father deserted her mother during her lifetime due to strained marital relations and the two were residing with the girl’s grandmother. Following the mother’s death, the minor girl continued to reside with her maternal grandmother.

In January 2019, the maternal grandmother filed an application for maintenance alongside a prayer for interim maintenance to secure financial support for the child. However, the family court rejected the interim maintenance plea, holding that unless the grandmother filed an appropriate application for legal custody or was appointed formally as a legal guardian, she was not entitled to initiate legal proceedings on behalf of the minor.  

The counsel for the minor petitioner submitted that the father had admitted paternity and the child had been in her grandmother’s uninterrupted care since May 2018. The counsel cited the Supreme Court precedent (Nagaiah vs. Chowdamma), arguing that a next friend can represent a minor in legal proceedings and the maternal grandmother had filed the application as a next friend.

The opposing counsel contended that the maternal grandmother doesn’t have a formal legal guardian appointment under the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC) rules, which makes her ineligible to file a petition on the minor girl’s behalf.  

Court Verdict

The court rejected the father’s objections related to procedures and emphasised that Section 125 CrPC is a summary, social justice mechanism to protect helpless dependents. The court observed that strict procedural rules of legal guardianship cannot be used in a maintenance proceeding to block statutory entitlement for the minor child.

The court referred to the coordinate Bench decisions from the Madras High Court, Kerala High Court, and Punjab and Haryana High Court, and noted that a caregiver grandmother with actual custody acts only as a medium to demand the child’s direct legal rights. The court held that matrimonial disputes cannot overrule a father’s duty to maintain his minor child.  

The high court held that the family court ignored the settled legal principle of maintenance of minor children, allowed the criminal revision, and quashed the impugned order. It remanded the matter to the Family Court, Jabalpur, to decide the interim maintenance afresh.