Arshi 17 May 2021

Hindu succession act

Respected members,

I have a question regarding the property distribution.

Facts are like-:

There is an ancestral property and technically there are four partners or I would say four family members between which the property should be divided but what happened was, first of all this property is a shop, so the family had given the shop to tenants and they were using the shop from last 8 years and they used to pay the rent to this family but after 5 years they stopped paying the rent because the shop was not working properly and when the family asked to give the shop back, they were not even ready for that so out of four members who were legally the heirs only one of them kept pursuing to get the shop back and others were not interested anymore.

Now, after three years of fighting for the shop, he has finally gotten the shop back through the help of the Court of Law.

What I want to ask is does the other three members still have the right over the shop because they all gave up on getting the shop back and he only did everything alone and also paid for all the financials and invested his time as well, so shouldn't he be the only one who should be considered as an owner of the shop?

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9 Replies

Sankaranarayanan (Advocate) 18 May 2021

No. The property belongs to Four .

G.L.N. Prasad (Retired employee.) 18 May 2021

The issue is complicated. The fact is a joint Hindu property was litigation and treated as lost by some co-sharers and they stopped any kind of contribution. The property becomes the exclusive and self-acquired property of the person that has struggled through litigation to get back the property without any type of co-operation from other co-sharers. (As held in old judgments). Only a declaration suit can bring exclusive and legally authentic rights.

P. Venu (Advocate) 18 May 2021

First of all, the property does not suggest itself to be ancestral.

Who are these four family members? How is that the property is jointly vested with them?

Kishor Mehta (CEO) 18 May 2021

If the property is legally ancestral, all the four partners are equal beneficiaries. The partner who has given time, energy and money to get the possession of the property can charge the property for his efforts.

sneha jaiswal 18 May 2021

Hello, Greetings of the day!
For the query you posted, I would suggest that:
Ancestral property is referred as self-acquired property into a Hindu joint family after the partition. Ancestral property is the type of property which is automatically acquired by the next-generation people.
Yes, the other three members still have the right over the shop because it is the ancestral property and till date, there is no partition in the property. Hence, all the three members together with the member who fought for the shop in the Court of Law and got the shop which is ancestral property. So, all four members will equally be entitled to the shop.
Hope it helps
Regards,
Sneha Jaiswal

T. Kalaiselvan, Advocate (Advocate) 18 May 2021

This property being co-shared by all the successors in interest had always devolved equally on all the co-sharers despite the fact that the other three members did not participate in the process of getting the tenant vacated from the rented premises.

If one of the shareholder had spent for litigation and other incidental expenses then he can claim an equal share from the other three dormant heirs/shareholders to compensate or reimburse him of the expenses he incurred.

But this cannot become a reason to deny the other shareholders their legitimate or rightful shares in the jointly shared property.