Hi,
My mother is around 60 years old and has a sister who is around 58+. Both of them are married to good families before 35+ years and well settled. We are based out of Coimbatore district.
They had a brother who committed suicide long time back (even before he was married). So basically my maternal grand parents lived alone after our mother and aunt's marriage.
Our Grand parents inherited about 18 acres of fertile land from my maternal grand father's parents. This is also in coimbatore district. My great grand father was said to be mentally unstable but this fact is not proven by any medical records. My grandfather was an active farmer and was making good amount of money by the standards of the period.
There was a period around 2000-2001 when I went for a job and my aunt's family was suffering financially. So we did not mind them look after grandparents' property and making money in the coconut farms. The problem was that their sons did not shine in education and did not have jobs or any other business. Basically we gave them some opportunity to become financially ok. The implicit understanding was for them to take care of my grandparents also.
Basically they were looking after the farms which was earning good amount of money along with taking care of our grandparents. My parents also came to Chennai for staying with me for about 1.5 years.
After that I left for USA for job requirements and been there for a year. But within that time, my aunt has convinced my grand parents to transfer all the properties to her name and registered a settlement without our knowledge. This happened in 2002-2003. We argued with them, tried negotiating but all of the efforts failed. We infact requested them to give us only one third share and keep 2/3 for them. My aunt has 2 sons and our family is myself (male) and my sister.
Some lawyers said that in this case my grand parents can give the property to anyone who they wish. This we felt is totally unfair.
After all efforts failed, what we did was to rope in my maternal grandfather's 2 sisters and filed a case saying that the settlement is invalid. We initially filed hte case in Coimbatore court from where it was transferred to speed court. Now it is transferred to taluk court in Pollachi. Infact the transfer of the case was so delayed for 1.5 years from Coimbatore and we had to send a letter to the judge complaining about it (after getting the advice from this forum). It is almost 5 years since we filed the case.
What is the likelihood that we will get our rightful share? We don't feel the lawyer is also paying enough attention to the case.
Can someone advise us of some good approach of taking this forward?
Muthu