Ancestral property status for daughters
Kamal Sharma
(Querist) 28 September 2014
This query is : Resolved
Respected Experts,
I have a query regarding the parental property.
My wife is one of two Children of my father-in-law (1 Boy + 1 Girl). My father-in-law is denying my wife's share of ancestral property and transferred all his property to his son via Release Deed. We filed a case in Sub-Division and lost on the basis that the court didn't approve the property to be ancestral because half of the property in dispute was inherited by my great father-in-law (father-in-Law's Father) from his uncle and half from his own father. The family Tree is given below:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4oA9dfIWgKwQmVJUTdldXdkMkk/view?usp=sharing
Please zoom the document or download it for your easy viewing of the family tree. My Wife is Labeled as DAUGHTER in this Family Tree.
The Property in Dispute was inherited by Grandfather D from his father C1 and his uncle C2 who were brothers and C2 was childless. Also, C1 died before C2 so the resulting property was directly inherited by D.
MY Question is:
1) Is this property considered Ancestral?
2) If yes then is the whole property is Ancestral or just the Half which was inherited by D from his father C1?
3) By mistake The Judge had the impression that C1, C2 and D are real brothers whereas in reality C1 and C2 are real brothers and D was son of C1.
So, on that wrong information the court decided that the property inherited by D which was inherited from C1 and C2 is not ancestral (since they were real brothers of D according to the court).
So, my question is that even in this case where the court misread the information that they were real brothers (C1,C2 and D) and D inherited property from them. According to this logic C1, C2 and D were sons of B and hence D was entitled for 1/3 share of the property by default? So, at least the 1/3 of the property in dispute here is ancestral?
Thank You very much,
Kamal
Kumar Doab
(Expert) 28 September 2014
Ancestral or Hindu Copacenary property as has been defined stands for any property acquired by the Hindu great grand father, passed that undivided property down the next three generations up to the present generation of great grand son/daughter. In short this property should be four generation old, secondly this should not have been divided by the users in the joint Hindu family as once a division of the property such as this asked by any of the Copacenar the share or portion which each Copacenar gets after the division becomes his or her Self Acquired property.
Self acquired property is any property purchased by an individual from his resources or any property he acquired as a part of division of any
Ancestral/Copacenary property or acquired as a legal heir or by any Testamentary document such as 'Will' etc.
Thus the property acquired from Uncle (since Uncle had no spouse/child) becomes self acquired.
Another point that may emerge is that:
If the property in question is :::Agriculture land?
Agriculture land is state subject.
If state rules provide share to married daughters in agriculture land then the married daughter may succeed.
A similar query is in discussion at another thread at:
http://www.lawyersclubindia.com/forum/Married-daughter-rights-in-father-ancestral-agri-property-108106.asp#.VCgPN2eSwb8
Valuable advice of learned experts is sought in above thread also.
Kamal Sharma
(Querist) 28 September 2014
Thanks for the answer Sir,
The property is Agricultural and Plot/House and the State is Haryana.
Kindly please refer to the Family Tree via this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4oA9dfIWgKwQmVJUTdldXdkMkk/view?usp=sharing
But, how can the whole property become Self-acquired?
If a person gets one share of the property from his father and one from Uncle (no child/spouse) then how the whole share becomes self-acquired?
At least the share received from the father is ancestral? or it is not?
Thank You
T. Kalaiselvan, Advocate
(Expert) 04 October 2014
Your question has been properly answered by expert Kumar Doab. In fact Mr. Kumar Doab in his words reproduced below has very clearly mentioned that once the property was properly partitioned among the legal heirs the nature of ancestral property extinguishes:
"In short this property should be four generation old, secondly this should not have been divided by the users in the joint Hindu family as once a division of the property such as this asked by any of the Copacenar the share or portion which each Copacenar gets after the division becomes his or her Self Acquired property."
The above clearly indicates that the property in question will not be ancestral and the court's judgement is very much right in holding it not to be ancestral property. If you are still not able to digest you may prefer an appeal and see if you get a different judgement and a relief.
