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Daughters can claim equal share in father’s property

“Once a daughter, always a daughter, but a son is a son till he is married,” the Supreme Court’s statement of August 11 was made after the amended 2005’s Hindu Succession Act had to be repeated in court.

The top court said that a woman has full liberty and right to demand an equal share in her father’s property. She can claim for the same being given to a son. It stressed the HS Act of 1956 which was changed in 2005 to provide inheritance rights to the daughters and said that this can have a retrospective effect.

“Does the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, which gave equal rights to daughters in ancestral property, have a retrospective effect?” the Supreme Court was asked to comment on.

The bench consisting of three judges and led by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra told in the court, “Once a daughter, always a daughter… a son is a son till he is married. The daughter shall remain a coparcener (one who shares equally with others in the inheritance of an undivided joint family property) throughout life, irrespective of whether her father is alive or not.”

The SC, in its statement of 2018, had said that a daughter “by birth become a coparcener in her own right in the same manner as the son.”

Today’s questions required the court to remark on its earlier rulings of 2016 and 2018 which opposed the understanding of Section 6 of the HS Act of 1956 that later got amended in the year 2005.

To rest further debates, the three judge-bench stated that women or daughters more so, can file for an equal claim in the undivided properties that the father possesses. This includes the certainty that the order remains valid even when the father died before the amendment of the Hindu Succession Act in 2005, highlighting the retrospective changes that the law brings with itself.

According to the law of 2005, the HS Act said that “Sons and daughters of a coparcener become coparcener by virtue of birth.” A coparcener is one who shares an equal amount of property in the undivided inheritance.

However, this amendment failed to offer a retrospective functionality and was hence brought further into notice this year as a number of people had asked for clarification by the Supreme Court which heard it on August 11th.