Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 40

Summary: - The greater age of a daughter in custody does not necessarily imply that she does not need a maid. Nor does her need for her mother indicate that she does not need a maid. The challenged judgment’s determination of an increase in the young daughter’s maintenance in both its forms with respect to housing rent was meagre and insufficient to meet her needs, particularly since the respondent’s means permit an increase. The absence of a logical implication leading to the conclusion reached by the challenged judgment on those grounds. Renders it tainted by defective inference. Rule: It is established in this Court’s case law that the criterion for a wife’s entitlement to a maid’s wages and recruitment expenses is that the husband be financially well-off and that his wife be among those customarily served by maids. Although assessing maintenance for relatives according to the relative’s needs and proportionately to the means or hardship of the person obliged to pay it is a question of fact independently determined by the trial court, the condition thereof is that it base its judgment on sound grounds derived from matters having a basis in the record and capable of leading to the conclusion it reached. A judgment’s grounds are considered tainted by defective inference if they contain a flaw affecting the soundness of the deduction. This occurs if the court bases its conviction on evidence that is objectively unsuitable for forming that conviction, on a failure to understand the factual elements established before it, or on a contradiction between those elements, as where the conclusion reached by the court does not logically follow from those elements established before it. That being so, the challenged judgment upheld the judgment under appeal in rejecting the maid’s wages and recruitment expenses, based on its inference that the daughter ...... had passed 7 years of age and, at that age, did not need someone to care for her. However, the greater age of a daughter in custody does not necessarily imply that she does not need a maid, nor does her need for her mother in itself indicate that she does not need a maid. Accordingly, the absence of a logical implication leading to the conclusion reached by the judgment on those grounds renders it tainted by defective inference. Furthermore, its determination of an increase in the young daughter’s maintenance in both its forms with respect to housing rent was meagre and insufficient to meet her needs, particularly since the respondent’s means permit an increase, as his income had increased since the previous assessment: his current salary reached 1990 dinars, whereas at the time of the previous judgment it was 920 dinars. This vitiates it and requires its partial cassation in this regard.