Section 17(A) of the West Pakistan Family Courts Act, 8 19. 1964 provides that a family court shall decree the suit for maintenance straightaway if a defendant fails to pay interim maintenance so fixed.

Section 17(A) of the West Pakistan Family Courts Act, 8 19. 1964 provides that a family court shall decree the suit for maintenance straightaway if a defendant fails to pay interim maintenance so fixed. In the present matter the petitioner has not failed once but twice on the same count, has evidently tried to avoid and wriggle out of the liability so imposed, has been recalcitrant in honouring his commitment before the court and has even failed to appear voluntarily in the execution proceedings where he was arrested and produced before the court. Even otherwise, instead of one opportunity the petitioner has been granted ample opportunities to follow the law but he has failed. The petitioner cannot be allowed to abuse the process of law!

Section 17-A makes the right of any defendant to defend the suit against him, otherwise guaranteed to him, conditional upon his payment of interim maintenance already fixed by the court. Such condition, though not assailed by the Petitioner, has been applied strictly by the Hon‟ble Superior Courts of Pakistan consistently. 

The right of any litigant to defend his cause before passage of any adverse order, as sacrosanct as it is, cannot be allowed to interfere in the dispensation of justice especially in a manner so as to endorse his repeated defiance of valid orders passed against him. The Petitioner neither challenged the order fixing the maintenance allowance nor that of the Appellate Court imposing condition of payment of interim allowance. It seems that the petitioner did not intend to pay the outstanding maintenance but merely agreed to pay the same to get the judgment & decree dated 07.02.2022 reversed and only prolong the litigation. Coming to his aid will reverse centuries old jurisprudence i.e.  Ex turpi causa non oritur actio (from a dishonorable cause an action does not arise). 

The social, legal and religious responsibilities of the petitioner also bind him to support his own biological daughters, provide for their maintenance and do so in a good and respectable way. It seems that the petitioner is not acquainted with the age-old saying „no other love in the world is like that of the love of a father for his girl‟. Moreover, „and clothing and maintenance must be borne by the father in a fair manner’ (Al-Baqarah, 233).  