Hindu daughters not entitled to equal share in ancestral property if they had died before September 9, 2005, rules Madras High Court
The Madras High Court ruled that daughters are only entitled to equal shares in ancestral property if they were alive when the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act came into force on September 9, 2005. The court clarified that the law cannot be applied retroactively to heirs of women who died before that date.
Why it matters
This legal precedent provides clarity on property inheritance rights and the temporal scope of the 2005 amendment for Hindu families.
In a Hindu family, the daughter of a coparcener (a person who has a legal right to share in an ancestral property by birth) will acquire equal rights, compared to a son, in the coparcenary property only if she had been alive on September 9, 2005 when the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 came into force and not otherwise, the Madras High Court has held.
Justices N. Sathish Kumar and M. Jothiraman ruled that the legal heirs of a woman who had died before September 9, 2005 could not seek any consequential right over the property when she herself had not acquired any coparcenary right. When the Parliament had fixed a cut-off date for conferring certain benefit, the court “cannot put the clock back on time,” the judges wrote.
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