Court also observed that 2005 Amendment Giving Equal Rights To Daughter Resulted In Reducing Shares Of Mother & Widow
Case Title: Vasumathi and Another v R Vasudevan and Others
Case No: S.A.No.527 of 2022
While discussing the 2005 amendments to the Hindu Succession Act, Justice N Seshasayee of the Madras High Court observed that while the amendment ensured that daughter’s got a share in the ancestral property, it also took away the quantum of property that would otherwise vest with the widow and the mother of a deceased.
“In the din of this euphoria what however, appears to have been overlooked is that other than the daughters, the widow and the mother of the deceased coparcener also figure as Class I female heirs, and the rise in status of daughters as coparceners in effect has reduced the quantum of property which the widow and the mother would get. But, what is significant is that neither before, nor now, the Parliament has attempted to destroy the fundamentals of Hindu law such as the coparcenery, the ancestral property, and their inter-relationship and the legal incidence attached to them,” the court observed.
The court was hearing a second appeal preferred by two daughters challenging the order of the Additional District Judge, Coimbatore through which an order of the Principal Subordinate Judge was reversed. The Subordinate Judge had decreed a suit for partition in favour of the daughters which was overturned and this was under appeal before the High Court. The first respondent was the father of the petitioners and the other respondents were their brothers.
The suit property was allotted to the first defendant father in a partition between him and his brother in 1986. The petitioner daughters argued that the properties were ancestral in character and thus claimed that they were coparceners along with their father and brothers. The daughters had thus demanded a share of 1/5th each in the suit property relying on Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act.
The respondent father, on the other hand, argued that after the notional partition which took place between him, his brother and sisters, the property was vested with the respondent in his personal capacity and it did not retain the character of ancestral property.
The petitioners however countered this argument and submitted that the recitals in the partition deed, through which the property were allotted to the father, described all the properties as a whole as ancestral property.
The court agreed with this contention and observed that when the father had consciously subscribed to the deed, treating the property as ancestral, he was estopped from resiling from his stated position as to the description of the property.
The court observed that the property held by the father was an ancestral property and what emerges out of the ancestral property will be necessarily ancestral property and what remains after providing for female heirs will also remain as ancestral property. The court thus held that the father’s undivided 1/3rd share in the property, along with the 1/18th share which he obtained from his father would constitute ancestral property and thus, the daughters, as coparceners, were eligible to the same.
The court thus held that the settlement deed executed by the father in favour of the petitioner’s brother would not hold ground as the daughters were already entitled to a share in the suit property. Thus, allowing the appeal in favour of the daughters, the court set aside the judgment of the Additional District Judge.
