The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005

What it does

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 (Act No. 39 of 2005) amended the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 to remove a distinction between sons and daughters in Hindu joint family property. Its central change is to section 6, which was substituted so that, in a joint Hindu family governed by the Mitakshara law, a daughter is a coparcener by birth in her own right, in the same manner as a son, with the same rights in the coparcenary property and the same liabilities. A coparcener's interest then passes by succession, not by survivorship.

It also changed the Schedule of class I heirs, which, as the site's note on inheriting property from abroad records, now has sixteen entries, and it removed provisions that had treated women less favourably, among them the special rule about a dwelling house and the disqualification of a widow who remarried.

Who it binds

It operates on those to whom the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 applies: Hindus in any of their forms, Buddhists, Jainas and Sikhs, and others who are not Muslims, Christians, Parsis or Jews unless Hindu law would not have governed them. It alters the rights of daughters, and so the rights of everyone who shares property with them: brothers, widows, mothers and the branches of the family. The daughter's place of residence does not matter. The site's note records that a daughter is a class I heir whether she lives in Mumbai or London.

What has changed, and when

• The Act received assent in September 2005 and came into force on 9 September 2005.
• The scope of the daughter's coparcenary right was settled by the Supreme Court in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma in 2020: the right is by birth, and it does not depend on the father having been alive on 9 September 2005.
• A partition effected by a registered deed or a decree of a court before 20 December 2004 is not reopened. That date is in the statute itself, in the proviso on dispositions and partitions.

What turns on it in practice

The first question in a family property dispute is whether the property is joint family property or the separate property of the person who died. The amendment concerns the first. Where a father held property that he acquired himself, a daughter inherits it with the other class I heirs as the 1956 Act provides, and the question of coparcenary does not arise. The site's note on inheriting property in India from abroad makes that assumption in its illustration, and states it, because the answer changes with the character of the property.

The second question is dating. Whether a daughter can claim a share in coparcenary property can depend on whether a partition took place before the cut off in the statute, and on what the record shows about it. Family arrangements that were made orally, or recorded informally, are open to challenge if they were meant to be partitions, and the proof is often the issue.

The third is the position of an heir living abroad. The Act applies to the property in India, and the heir's residence matters only to the exchange control and tax questions that arise when she wants to take money out. The site's notes on inheritance and on remittance deal with those separately.

The site's property and succession practice meets the amendment in any dispute among siblings over ancestral property, and in any family settlement meant to bind all the children, daughters included.