Crunch-hit IT employees want court to halve fee

Forget about being laid-off, even being divorced is tough in these times of recession.

Nearly 400 applications, most of them filed by software engineers, have piled up in the last few months in the city's family's courts urging a cut in maintenance charges payable to their separated wives.

These applications, called "interlocutary" ones, "have become common now," according to advocate KS Arun, a divorce lawyer.

One of the applicants this paper spoke to said he had urged a city court to halve the maintenance charge payable to his separated wife. He said he had lost his job at Oracle recently and could no longer afford to pay Rs15,000 per month to his wife as alimony — an amount perfectly okay with him when times were better.

According to Children's Rights Initiative for Shared Parenting (CRISP), many couples have approached the group seeking help to reduce alimony charges. "We have received 60 complaints about reduction in maintenance charges," CRISP founder Kumar Jahgirdar told DNA.

Many struggling couples are also discovering it's better to stay together, since two households would be less easily manageable than one.