Indian court’s verdict expands rights of homemakers and recognises value of chores

A court in India has ruled that a wife was entitled to an equal share of her husband’s property, in a landmark judgement recognising the role of women as homemakers.

The Madras High Court in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu said a woman as a homemaker played no less of a role than her husband with an 8-hour job.

The judgement was passed during the hearing of a domestic dispute case on 21 June by Justice Krishnan Ramasamy.

The verdict is not a binding precedent for other states in India, but it is the first time a court in the country has recognised the rights of women who perform household chores.

The court said that the “contribution which wives make towards the acquisition of the family assets by performing their domestic chores” to allow her husband to work would be considered when deciding who has a right to the property.

The court stated that if the property was registered in either the husband’s or wife’s name, “the spouse who looks after the home and cares for the family for decades, is entitled to a share in the property”.

The case involved a Tamil Nadu couple who married in 1965. The husband, who moved to Saudi Arabia for a job in 1982, alleged that his wife was claiming sole ownership over the property that she bought using the money he sent back home.

The man, who died in 2007, claimed that his wife was hiding gold jewellery and alleged she was having an affair with another man to whom she wanted to sell an asset.

After his death, his children filed a second appeal before the High Court as his legal heirs.

The wife claimed that she looked after the family while her husband was away, giving up her opportunities for employment and earned money by tailoring and giving tuitions to partly fund some of the properties.

The judgment observed that the husband and wife are as two wheels of a family cart where the "contribution made by either the husband by earning or the wife by serving and looking after the family and children".

It would mean that "both are entitled equally to whatever they earned by their joint effort".

Being a homemaker, a wife performs multiple tasks such as of a manager with skills of planning, organising, budgeting, running errands, of a chef by cooking food, and sometimes even those of a doctor, the court observed.

“By performing these skills, a wife makes the home a comfortable environment and her contribution towards the family, and certainly it is not a valueless job, but it is a job doing for 24 hours without holidays, which cannot be less equated with that of the job of an earning husband who works only for 8 hours,” the court said.