Succession — Daughters' Rights Under Section 8 · 15 May 2026

B.S. Lalitha v. Bhuvanesh: 2005 Amendment Does Not Extinguish a Daughter's Pre-Existing Right to Inherit as a Class-I Heir

Supreme Court of India · 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 506

A man died intestate in 1985, leaving behind his widow, three daughters and four sons. The sons carried out an oral partition among themselves and later, in 2000, executed a registered partition deed with their mother — without allotting any share to their sisters or making them parties to it. In 2007, the daughters sued for partition, claiming an equal share each as Class I heirs under Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act. The trial court repeatedly rejected attempts to have the suit dismissed at the outset, but in 2024 the Karnataka High Court accepted the sons' argument that the suit was barred by Section 6(5) of the Act, which protects partitions carried out before 20 December 2004, and threw the case out without a trial.

The Supreme Court set aside that order and allowed the daughters' appeal. It held that Section 6(5) only protects pre-2004 partitions from the new coparcenary rights daughters were given by birth under the 2005 amendment to Section 6 — it does not touch a daughter's separate, pre-existing right to inherit her father's property as a Class I heir under Section 8 when he dies without a will. A partition carried out among the sons alone, the Court held, cannot extinguish that independent right, and the daughters' suit was allowed to proceed to be tried on its merits.

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