Family Law

Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma

(2020) 9 SCC 1

Facts

Different Supreme Court decisions had created uncertainty concerning daughters’ coparcenary rights under amended Section 6.
In Prakash v. Phulavati, the Court held that both the daughter and her coparcener-father had to be alive on 9 September 2005.
In Danamma v. Amar, daughters were given shares even though the father had died before the amendment.
Several pending appeals raised connected questions:
whether the father needed to be alive;
whether daughters born before 2005 were covered;
whether pending partition proceedings had to be recalculated;
how alleged oral partitions should be treated.
A three-judge Bench was constituted to settle the conflict.

Whether a daughter becomes a coparcener by birth even where her father died before 9 September 2005.
Whether the amended rights apply to daughters born before the amendment.
Which earlier partitions and transactions remain protected.
Whether an oral partition can defeat a daughter’s claim.

A daughter of a Mitakshara coparcener is a coparcener by birth in the same manner as a son.
The daughter may have been born before or after 2005.
She must be alive on 9 September 2005 to claim the statutory benefit.
It is not necessary that her father or another predecessor coparcener be alive on that date.
The amendment is retroactive rather than fully retrospective:
it operates from 9 September 2005;
but uses the antecedent fact of the daughter’s birth to confer status.
Transactions protected before 20 December 2004 remain saved, including:
dispositions;
alienations;
testamentary dispositions;
completed partitions recognised by law.
A plea of oral partition must be accepted only exceptionally and upon cogent, contemporaneous public documents.

The Court rejected the “living coparcener” theory.
Coparcenary membership arises by birth and does not depend upon inheritance from a living father.
A father’s death:
changes the size of shares;
may cause devolution of his interest;
but does not necessarily end the wider coparcenary.
Therefore, the absence of the father on 9 September 2005 could not exclude the daughter.
The amendment aimed to remove the fundamental inequality under which sons obtained coparcenary status by birth while daughters did not.
Married and unmarried daughters were placed equally with sons.
The Court also distinguished a notional partition from an actual partition.
The fictional partition used under the old Section 6 merely calculated the deceased’s share.
It did not physically divide the property or permanently destroy the continuing coparcenary.
Where only a preliminary partition decree had been passed, shares could be modified before the final decree to give effect to amended Section 6.
At the same time, the Court protected genuinely completed past transactions.
Claims of oral partition were treated cautiously because male members could manufacture such pleas to defeat daughters.
Oral evidence alone was insufficient; exceptional proof through revenue records and other contemporaneous public documents was required.

Daughters are coparceners by birth with the same rights and liabilities as sons.
A daughter born before 2005 may claim the right from 9 September 2005.
The father-coparcener need not have been alive on that date.
Prakash v. Phulavati was overruled to the extent that it required a living father.
Completed transactions and recognised partitions before 20 December 2004 were protected.
Use this case for: the authoritative modern law on daughters’ equal Mitakshara coparcenary rights.