Supreme Court upholds daughters equal property rights under Hindu Succession Act

August 11: In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court on Tuesday rule in favour of rights of daughters to have a share in a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) property. A three-judge bench of Justices Arun Mishra, S Nazeer and M R Shah said that they will have equal coparcenary rights in joint Hindu family property even if the father died before the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005.

The bench pronounced the judgment while hearing a bunch of appeals questioning whether the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, had a retrospective effect. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005 gave equal rights to daughters in ancestral property.

This clarification is important since it sets aside a clutch of previous decisions by the top court that she would have the coparcenary (Coparcener is a term used for a person who assumes a legal right in parental property by birth only) right only if both the father and the daughter were alive as on September 9, 2005 when the amendment was notified. The bench further directed that matters pending in trial courts on this issue be decided in six months.

Doing away with the gender bias in the legal system, the Amendment in the Act had made sure that ‘In a Joint Hindu family governed by the Mitakshara law, the daughter of a coparcener shall by birth become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son, have the same rights in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son; and is allotted the same share as is allotted to a son’.