Daughters have equal coparcenary rights in joint Hindu family property: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court plugged loopholes in the law that provides daughters an equal share in joint family property under the Hindu Succession Act.
A three-judge bench comprising justices Arun Mishra, S Abdul Nazeer and MR Shah said a daughter would have an equal share of inheritance as a son regardless of when she was born and whether her father was alive when the Hindu Succession Act was amended in 2005.

“Daughters give a lifetime of happiness to fathers” and must get a share equal to sons, the bench said in its verdict on Tuesday, directing high courts and subordinate courts to decide pending cases in six months.

This won’t apply to property partitions that took place before December 20, 2004, as stipulated in Section 6(1) of the Act. Apart from this, a daughter will have an equal share in the inheritance as a son regardless of when she was born and whether her father was alive when the Act was amended. The amendment had laid down a cutoff date of September 9, 2005 — the date it took effect — for claims to avoid legal complications.



Before the amendment, daughters were entitled only to a share of their father’s inheritance and weren’t independent coparceners like sons. From September 9, 2005, daughters living or born to any coparcener of a joint family were deemed to be a coparcener and would be conferred equal rights and liabilities under the law.

A coparcener is someone who has equal rights of inheritance with others. Certain Supreme Court rulings had subsequently said the law would not apply to cases where the father had died before the law came into effect. The verdicts made it contingent that both father and daughter should have been alive on September 9, 2005, for a daughter to be treated as coparcener on par with the son and be entitled to an equal share in joint family property.

Tuesday’s ruling was on petitions that challenged those verdicts and had been referred to a three-judge bench for clarity. The bench led by justice Mishra clarified that there would be no exceptions to the rule that daughters would get the status of coparceners on par with sons and hence an equal share in family property.

It accepted arguments by senior advocate Bishwajit Bhattacharyya, who said the September 9, 2005, cutoff could not be interpreted to only cover daughters whose fathers were alive on that date. That would restrict the scope of the law and would be against legislative intent to extend the benefit to all daughters, he argued.

“Daughter of a coparcener in Section 6 does not imply that daughter of a living coparcener or father, as the death of the coparcener/father does not automatically lead to the end of coparcenary which may continue with other coparceners alive. Thus, the coparcener, from whom the daughter is inheriting by her being coparcener, need not be alive… It cannot be inferred that the daughter is conferred with the right only on the death of a living coparcener. The precise declaration made in Section 6(1) has to be taken to its logical end, otherwise it would amount to a denial of the very right to a daughter expressly conferred by the legislature,” the court ruled.

Rishab Shroff, partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, said that the ruling cleared much of the confusion over the issue. “It will make families and daughters think about their succession and central rights… to either amend existing succession plans or create new ones,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if any old settlements created under the previous approach will be reopened or questioned now.”