The persons who were entitled to claim maintenance under prior Hindu law are as follows:
Besides the persons entitled to maintenance under the present Act, there were certain other persons as given below who were entitled to maintenance under the old law.
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(1) Disqualified heirs and their wives:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Whenever a son or other heir was disqualified from inheritance on account of physical or mental disability, he was entitled to maintenance for himself and his family out of the property which he would have inherited but for disability. The Act does not provide for maintenance of such persons.
(2) Concubine or Avarudha Stree:
The term “Avarudha Stree” applies to women, kept permanently by a person in his house as confined under his own protection in a manner as to make it impossible for her to have connection with a stranger. The woman in order to come within the definition of “Avarudh Stree” must be a concubine living under a man’s immediate protection and control. Their relationship need not be secret but the evidence must show that she lived with the man openly as a member of his family.
Under the old Hindu law, a concubine could not claim maintenance from her paramour during his life time, but after his death, if she remained faithful to him so long he was alive; she acquired a right of maintenance against his estate, whether ancestral or self-acquired. But her right to maintenance is conditional to her chastity. The Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 does not provide for the maintenance of a concubine.
(3) Gharjamai:
Prior to the present Act, Gharjamai had some right to claim maintenance from his father-in-law. But this right does not exist any longer after the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 was passed.