The Hindu Succession Act, 1956

What it does

The Act codifies the law of intestate succession among Hindus, which is the law that applies when a Hindu dies without leaving a will. It lays down the order in which relatives inherit, and it does so in classes. The heirs in the first class, who include the widow, sons, daughters and the mother, take together and to the exclusion of all others. If there are none, the property goes to the heirs in the second class and then on to more distant relatives.

The rules for a male and a female intestate are different. The general rules for a male intestate say how the property is divided among the heirs in the first class. A female Hindu's property is dealt with separately, and section 15 first looks to her sons, daughters and husband, then to the heirs of her husband, then to her mother and father, then to the heirs of her father and of her mother. Property she inherited from her parents or from her husband or father-in-law goes, if she leaves no child, back to the heirs of the father or of the husband respectively.

The Act also changed the status of the property a Hindu woman holds. It made a woman's ownership of property she possesses absolute, in place of the earlier limited estate. A Hindu may still dispose of property by will, and section 30 provides that a Hindu may dispose of property by will in accordance with the Indian Succession Act, 1925 or any other law applicable to Hindus, so the Act's rules apply only to what the will does not dispose of.

Who it binds

Hindus, which for this Act includes Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, and persons who are Hindu by birth or conversion in the manner the Act describes. It does not apply to Muslims, Christians, Parsis or Jews, whose succession is governed by other law, and it does not apply to members of a Scheduled Tribe unless the Central Government so directs by notification.

The Act does not turn on where the heir lives. An heir who has gone abroad, or who holds another nationality, inherits on the same footing as one who lives in India, and the rules that affect the heir's position abroad are found in the foreign exchange law and not in this Act.

What has changed, and when

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 is the main change. It substituted the section on the joint family property so that a daughter becomes a coparcener in her own right by birth, with the same rights and liabilities as a son. In Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020), the Supreme Court held that the daughter's right arises by birth and does not depend on whether her father was alive on the date the amendment began. The amendment is a related instrument on this site.

Before the amendment, a daughter had no share in the coparcenary property by birth, and a family arrangement or a partition made on that footing has to be examined in the light of the amendment and the decision.

What turns on it in practice

The commonest dispute is about what property is covered. Property that a person held as a coparcener in a joint family passes differently from property that the person acquired alone, and the first question in a succession matter is how the property was acquired. A property that passed through a will is outside the Act's intestate rules, and a will that is challenged brings the matter back to them.

The second point is the position of the heir abroad. The site's note on inheriting property in India from abroad treats the Act as the source of the right to inherit and the foreign exchange law as the source of the limits on sending the proceeds out of the country. The two questions are separate, and a person who has inherited has the title whatever the position on the money.

The third is the family law work. In disputes between spouses and between siblings over family property, the shares each person can claim under the Act are the starting point, and the firm's matrimonial and family practice reads them alongside the law of maintenance and the settlement of the family assets.