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”.
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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.
