The maintenance dispute between Sadiq Subhani and Mst. Sadia Arooj (the judgment spells it 'Arooj', not 'Urooj') began with a Family Court decree of maintenance at Rs.2,500 per month each for respondent No.1 and a minor brother from 18.07.2009, with a 20% annual increase. The Lahore High Court, by its judgment of 11.09.2025, upheld the decree — but added a costly rider: the Executing Court was directed to calculate the maintenance with the yearly enhancement at 20% on a compound basis. That single word, 'compound', inflated the liability by an alleged Rs.10,64,280.
In C.P.L.A.4959/2025, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Yahya Afridi — judgment authored by Mr. Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, with Mr. Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmed Khan — converted the petition into an appeal and allowed it in part on 22.09.2026. The Supreme Court set aside only the compound-enhancement direction and restored the Appellate Court's judgment of 14.10.2024. Maintenance for the adult respondent No.1 had already stopped after 24.03.2021 on attaining majority, and the custody proceedings stood decided against the petitioner.
The legal point is a quiet but expensive one: an executing court cannot multiply a decree beyond what the decree itself, as modified in appeal, authorises. The difference between simple and compound enhancement over fifteen-plus years is not a rounding error — here it ran into seven figures. The Supreme Court's correction restored the decree to what the appellate court had ordered.
For family litigants, two reminders emerge. First, enhancement clauses in maintenance decrees deserve close reading at the appellate stage — a direction slipped in by the High Court can compound, literally, for years. Second, executing courts should compute strictly within the decree's four corners. Sood ki tarah barhta kharcha — maintenance me bhi — needs a court's clear direction, not an executing officer's arithmetic.