Rights of property of widow under Hindu Law

 

            Rights of property of widow under Hindu Law

                                                                        Kaushiki Singh*

 Women are revered as goddesses in their own right in India, a society steeped in history and culture. Widows and women who have lost their husbands have been denied fundamental dignity and rights for far too long in a culture where women are appreciated for who they are.

A widow's status was unknown in the early Vedic period.

Women were held in great regard in ancient India (or the Vedic period). They were granted the right to an education and the freedom to marry whoever they pleased. In terms of widowhood, the criteria were also quite broad. One of the alternatives available to a widow was to volunteer to accompany her departed husband on his cremation pyre, which Sahamarana did.

The Niyog approach, for example, permitted a widow to conceive another man's kid and then devote the rest of her life to caring for the child. She also had the option of choosing her own companion.

Property rights are without a doubt the most significant and disputed of all government-granted rights. The purpose of this dissertation is to compare and contrast the property rights of women in the Vedic and modern periods.

Women did not have property rights in Vedic times, according to popular belief, and property rights were only granted through legislation like the Hindu Succession Act. Although Manusmriti does not explicitly condemn women's property rights, it is the most usually cited source for this conclusion. The widow's position changed in the later Vedic period.

 

Status of the widow in later Vedic period

During the late Vedic and early mediaeval periods, women's glorious status began to wane. "A virtuous woman is one who, after the death of her husband, continually remains clean and achieves heaven, even if she has no kid," according to a 2000-year-old scripture by Manu, the Hindu primogenitor of mankind. Widow-burning practises like as Sati shaped Hindu society's rules of social behaviour for widows. They were treated in a terrible and unjust manner. Traditionally, the widow was held accountable for her husband's death. Even the existence of a widow's shadow was thought to be a sign of impending doom. If her husband died, the wife was also required to give up all of her home's comforts. As a symbol of mourning, she should wear a modest white sari. Windows were supposed to bring good fortune to weddings, festivals, and other celebrations.

Women's rights over property deteriorated after the Vedic period and reached their lowest point during the British period. The causes for this are a progressive loss in education as well as women's economic contribution to society, which has left them financially reliant on their families to survive. Furthermore, one of the key reasons for the erosion of women's rights was a foreign invasion.

TRANSFER OF PROPERTY:-

The Transfer of Property Act of 1882 governs property transactions in India. The nature of the deed to the property determines how the property was transferred to the deceased, as well as whether he owned it jointly with the wife or separately; whether the property was inherited or purchased; and whether the deceased created any last will or testament in the name of the spouse or whether no wills or testaments exist.

In essence, under current law, if a will states how property will be split, that document takes precedence over all others as long as it is legal. The laws of succession kick in when someone dies without a will. In its most basic form, succession refers to the transfer of property following the death of the owner. Personal religious views determine the legislative or customary norms that govern succession.

 

1. The widow will receive a share of her father-in-self-acquired law's property. The self-acquired property of the deceased father-in-law shall transfer to his Class I heirs. The Schedule of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, contains a list of Class I heirs. A Class I heir is a widow (of a deceased son who died before the deceased). Among the famous Class I heirs are the deceased's widow, mother, sons, and daughters. As a result, the widow is almost certain to receive a portion of her father-in-assets. law's On the other hand, the amount of Self-Acquired Property she receives from her father-in-law is determined by the number of living Class I heirs. Widows who want to remarry have a right to their late husband's property under the Hindu Succession Act of 1956. The property is divided equally among the widow, sons, daughters, and mother of the deceased.

 A division bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has declared that under the Hindu Succession Act,195, a Hindu widow does not need to be in true physical possession of her husband's property to become the absolute owner of it.

Former Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain were among those on the Court who overruled a 1983 judgement by a single bench that held that the widow required to be in physical possession of the property to become its ultimate owner.

In the case involving three sons of late Bhagwan Devi and 12 plots of land in Hoshiarpur, the decision was made. Devi's relatives questioned her ability to make a will because she didn't own the land bequeathed to her by her late husband, who died in 1949. For more than 50 years, the case has been in the works. The lawsuit was being challenged by the third generations of both sides.

 The widow's claim was successfully defended by senior lawyer Anupam Gupta, who attended on behalf of one of the sons in whose name Bhagwan Devi had made a will.

 According to Gupta, the Hindu Succession Act and the Hindu Women's Rights to Property Act, both passed in 1937, for the first time in history, allowed Hindu women the right to property. However, this benefit, known as Hindu Widows Estate, was only good for her lifetime. According to Gupta, the property passed to her husband's heirs when she died.

Gupta had asserted that even though the widow was out of possession, her mere right to accede to her husband's property extended into an absolute right under the Hindu Succession Act, citing Supreme Court (Mangal Singh against Rattano,1967) and Madras High Court judgements.

Based on Supreme Court (Mangal Singh against Rattano,1967) and Madras High Court judgements, Gupta claimed that even though the widow was out of possession, her simple right to accede to her husband's property matured into an absolute right under the Hindu Succession Act.

 Immovable property acquisition and resale. Without requiring proof of any legal necessity, the widow was competent to sell immovable property not inherited from her husband but purchased in the course of her business outright, the "legal necessity" being that the property was sold in the course of a business that she had the right to continue if she so desired. In other cases, just because the property was sold for less than the widow paid for it did not rule out the possibility of a 'legal necessity.' Whatever limitations may exist in the power of alienation of one of the two Hindu widows who inherits a life interest in their husband's estate, nothing prevents them from splitting the estate as long as the property remains undivided.

 Even though Hindu widows who share a joint interest in their husband's inheritance have no right to enforce an absolute partition of the joint estate between them, if the widows are unable to enjoy the property peacefully, they may hold the property separately by mutual agreement or otherwise, and the share of one will pass to the other by right of survivorship, even though they have no right to partition in the strict sense. A widow is regarded as a Class 1 heir if her spouse dies intestate, or without making a will, and is entitled to the same share as other lawful successors. If there are no other legal heirs, she is entitled to the entire fortune under the Hindu Succession Act 1956. Because she is the title-holder, she has the right to sell the land later without the agreement of other legal heirs.

https://www.theleaflet.in/progressive-judicial-orders-boost-hindu-womens-inheritance-rights

Ajit Kaur v. Darshan Singh, 2019 SCC – Ajit Kaur v. Darshan Singh, 2019 SCC – A widow cannot claim ownership of mutated property under Section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act. "Section 14(1) of the Act, 1956 clearly envisage that the possession of the widow, however, must be under some vestige of a claim, right or title or under any of the devise which has been purported under the law," the court said in a case where a widow claimed ownership of a property that had been put in her name due to an oral gift from her husband before his death.

The Court went on to discuss mutation and made the following statement.

 "A fiscal activity that neither creates nor extinguishes title nor confers any presumption value on title is a property's mutation in the revenue records." It only allows the individual to pay the land tax in whose favour the mutation was ordered. At the same time, a declaratory ruling restores the alienated property to the alienor's estate, and the alienees' heirs are entitled to the property's advantages under the law of succession until the alienees can show the court that they have no subsisting interest in the property."

As a result, the Court determined that the widow was not entitled to any of the devises stated in the explanation to Section 14(1) of the Act, 1956, while she was in possession.

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·         Student of 2^nd Year BBA.LL.B, MIT World Peace University, Pune