PRAYAGRAJ, April 2 -- The Allahabad high court has held that a husband's obligation to maintain his wife continues even after his death and the widow can claim maintenance from her father-in-law. A division bench comprising Justice Arindam Sinha and Justice Satya Veer Singh dismissed the first appeal filed by Akul Rastogi. In the order dated March 17, the court observed, "It is well settled that a husband is obliged to maintain his wife. This position has emanated from situations, where the spouses have separated and the wife has sought maintenance, either on the criminal side or under maintenance provisions in Hindu law. So much so, this obligation of the husband to maintain the wife attaches even after death of the husband in the law allowing the widow to claim maintenance from her father-in-law." As per Section 19 of the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, HAMA, a widowed daughter-in-law can claim maintenance from her father-in-law to the extent that the widow is unable to maintain herself out of her own earnings or from her own property. It says that the widow can only approach her father-in-law if she is entirely unable to obtain maintenance from the estate of her deceased husband, the estate of her own parents, or from her own children and their estates. The maintenance obligation becomes unenforceable if the father-in-law lacks the means to pay it from coparcenary or ancestral property in his possession, particularly property from which the daughter-in-law has not already obtained a share....