Husband's ITR showed Rs 4.5 lakhs. Court said his real income is Rs 2 lakhs a month.

His income tax return said Rs 4.5 lakhs a year. The Family Court said he actually earns Rs 2 lakhs a month. The High Court sided with the tax return. The Supreme Court just said—

On a Delhi-NCR afternoon in March 2022, a wife and her two daughters walked out of a Family Court in Gautambudh Nagar with a maintenance order in hand—the paper still warm from the printer, the seal of the Additional Principal Judge stamped firmly at the bottom. The husband, a contractor, had been ordered to pay Rs 20,000 a month to his wife and Rs 15,000 each to his daughters. The Family Court had looked at the evidence—his own admissions in Guardians and Wards Act proceedings (a law about who gets custody of a child), his work as a contractor, the way he had hidden his real earnings—and concluded that the man's actual income was roughly Rs 2 lakhs a month. The husband did not like that number.

When the High Court looked only at the tax form

He challenged the order before the Allahabad High Court. The High Court, in a single paragraph—barely a page, the ink sparse and the reasoning thinner—set aside the Family Court's entire order. Its reasoning was simple: the husband's income tax returns showed only Rs 4.5 lakhs per annum. If the tax department believed he earned that little, the High Court saw no basis for the Family Court to assess his income at Rs 2 lakhs a month. The revision was allowed. The maintenance vanished.

The wife and daughters appealed to the Supreme Court. They argued that the High Court had missed the point entirely. The Family Court had not plucked Rs 2 lakhs from thin air. It had conducted what the Supreme Court would later call a "holistic assessment" of the evidence—the husband's own statements in other legal proceedings, his status as a contractor, and the clear pattern of concealment. The income tax return, they said, was just one piece of paper. The Family Court had looked at the whole picture.

Why the Supreme Court said ITRs are not reliable

The Supreme Court agreed. In a judgment delivered on October 31, 2022, a bench of Justice Dr. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and Justice Hima Kohli held that "income tax returns do not necessarily furnish an accurate guide of the real income of a person." Particularly in matrimonial conflicts, the Court observed, there is a tendency to underestimate income. People who file returns often declare less than what they actually earn—especially when a maintenance claim is looming.

The Court said it is for the Family Court to determine, on a holistic assessment of all the evidence, what the real income of the respondent is. The goal is to enable the dependents—the wife and children—to live in a condition commensurate with the status to which they were accustomed during the marriage. A tax return filed for the income tax department is not the same as a truthful declaration of earnings in a matrimonial dispute.

The High Court's mistake: a single-paragraph reversal

The Supreme Court found the High Court's approach fundamentally flawed. A High Court exercising revisional jurisdiction (the power to review a lower court's order for legal errors) must appreciate the totality of reasoning recorded by the Family Court. It cannot set aside a maintenance order merely because there is a discrepancy between the income assessed by the Family Court and the income shown in the tax return. The High Court had not engaged with the evidence that the Family Court relied upon—the husband's admissions, his contractor status, the concealment. It had simply looked at the ITR figure and said: this does not match.

The Supreme Court set aside the High Court's order. But it did not simply restore the Family Court's maintenance order. Instead, it restored the criminal revision to the High Court for fresh consideration—with a set of conditions that gave the order teeth. The husband had to pay all arrears of maintenance by December 31, 2022. If he failed, the revision would stand dismissed automatically. From November 7, 2022, he had to continue paying the monthly amounts as per the Family Court order, pending the High Court's fresh decision. The High Court was directed to hear the revision on merits expeditiously.

What this means for every maintenance case

For practitioners and litigants, the message is clear. An income tax return is not a shield against a maintenance claim. Family Courts are entitled—indeed, required—to look beyond the declared income and assess what a person actually earns. Admissions in other proceedings, lifestyle evidence, business records, and patterns of concealment all matter. The tax return is one data point, not the final word.

THE PLAY: In any maintenance proceeding, the Family Court must assess real income through holistic evidence—ITRs alone are not reliable, especially when the respondent has a history of under-declaration.

The Supreme Court ended where the Family Court began: with a wife and two daughters who needed to live in the condition they had known, and a husband whose tax return told only part of the story. The courtroom fell silent as the judgment was read—the bench's words carrying the weight of every maintenance case where a piece of paper had been used to hide a full life.