Mumbai, Nov. 21 -- The Bombay High Court on Thursday ruled that a husband cannot seek the shield of insolvency proceedings to escape his legally mandated obligation to pay maintenance to his wife. A single-judge bench of justice Jitendra Jain held that maintenance payments arise from a moral and personal duty, and are not a debt that can be dissolved by bankruptcy law. The court dismissed an insolvency petition filed by a Mumbai-based man, Mehul Jagdish Trivedi, who sought to be declared insolvent after failing to pay a monthly maintenance of Rs.25,000 to his wife, as directed by a family court in May 2021. The arrears, according to the petitioner, had reached Rs.22.3 lakh, which he claimed he was unable to pay due to his modest monthly income of Rs.15,000 as a dance teacher. The court rejected this argument outright, stressing that maintenance does not amount to a debt under the Presidency-Towns Insolvency Act, 1909, and therefore cannot be the basis for declaring a person insolvent. Referring to a Mysore High Court judgment, the court reiterated that a husband's obligation to maintain his wife flows from the marital relationship and the policy of the law, and not from a commercial or contractual liability. The court further held that allowing insolvency proceedings to stay or diluting a maintenance order would "undermine the very purpose" of the law and deprive the wife of her rightful support. Justice Jain noted that the petitioner's attempt to declare himself insolvent was essentially an indirect effort to stall the family court's maintenance order, which he had already challenged separately through a criminal revision petition....