Daughters have equal right on property: SC 

Daughters have equal right on property: SC 

Part of: GS Mains II – Social/Women issue 

Context: 

• The Supreme Court recently held that daughters, like sons, have an equal birth-right to inherit joint Hindu family property.  
• The verdict now grants equal rights to daughters to inherit ancestral property would have retrospective effect. 

The judgement observes that “a daughter always remains a loving daughter. A son is a son until he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter throughout her life”. 

Do you know? 

• A three-judge Bench ruled that a Hindu woman’s right to be a joint heir to the ancestral property is by birth and does not depend on whether her father was alive or not when the law was enacted in 2005. 
• The substituted Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 confers the status of coparcener to a daughter born before or after the amendment in the same manner as a son. 
• Coparcener is a person who has a birth-right to parental property. 

2005 Amendment 

• The Mitakshara school of Hindu law codified as the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governed succession and inheritance of property but only recognised males as legal heirs. 
• The law applied to everyone who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion. 
• Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and followers of Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj are also considered Hindus for the purposes of this law. 
• In a Hindu Undivided Family, several legal heirs through generations can exist jointly. 
• Women were recognised as coparceners or joint legal heirs for partition arising from 2005. 
• Section 6 of the Act was amended in 2005 to make a daughter a coparcener by birth in her own right in the same manner as the son. 
• The law also gave the daughter the same rights and liabilities as the son. 
• The law applies to ancestral property and to intestate succession in personal property.