I differ to opinions of @ Rama Chary Cell and Kishore Mehta
1. A nominee (here widow wife) is only a trustee of the locker (as claimed to be just a nominee in bank records), which she is expected to safeguard till such time as the legal heir or beneficiary can be determined and the proceeds can be passed on to him/her.
2. In the instance query suspecting fraud or anticipate any dissent, Bank may ask her to produce a succession certificate and or may even ask for giving undertaking (as now a days RBI has left it to individual Banks to decide internaly) if unilaterally she approaches Bank being widow nominee to open the locker and take out materials facts out of it.
3. Actually here in this query a succession certificate establishes who the legal heirs of the deceased are and gives them the authority to inherit securities and any other assets. The beneficiaries can file a petition for a succession certificate in a district or high court as the two have concurrent jurisdiction. The petition usually mentions the relation of the petitioner with the deceased, details of other surviving legal heirs, the time, date and place of death of the deceased and the fact that the deceased died intestate. The court, after examining the petition, issues a notice to all the respondents. It also issues notice in a newspaper and specifies a time frame (usually one and a half months) within which anyone who has objections may raise them. If no one contests the notice and the court is satisfied then it passes an order to issue a succession certificate to the petitioner.
4. If there are more than one petitioner(s), then the court may jointly grant them a succession certificate, but it will not grant more than one certificate for a single asset.
5. Here for the purpose of this query the jewels (40%) in question of the Hindu male dying intestate (without a will) would be given first to heirs within Class I. However, here for the purpose of this query both widow as well as mother of deceased Hindu male are Class I heirs and are having eligible claims accordingly irrespective on whose names Bills are.
6. Hence ideally what should ought to happen now is that mother of deceased Hindu (son) should seek injunction / stay Order "not to disturb bank locker" and make Bank as well as widow (nominee) as party. Second thing that ideally ought to happen here is that the widow (wife) will not have any rights over 60% jewels first of all and she can only claim rights over 40% jewels for a reason that through money of her late husband they were purchased and she being Class I heir has equal claim over it. Further (here is a reasoned catch in this interesting query) ideally they should internally decide the issues otherwise from this 40% claim she has to part off 20% to her MIL too as she (MIL) is also Class I heir having equal rights is my view.
We donot know whose side you actually representing here, but make her (deceased friend’s wife) realize some sense before she looses more out of 40% plus add to it expensive long drawn litigation process read with legal expenses she will be shelling out are some of my views.
