Revanasiddappa v. Mallikarjun, (2023 INSC 783)
The Supreme Court in this case clarified the legal ambiguity surrounding the inheritance rights of children born from void or voidable marriages. The appeal came about in response to a Karnataka High Court decision in which the children of a man’s second (and void) marriage asked for part of his ancestral land. The man’s first wife and her sons disagreed and argued, saying that the Supreme Court in its previous decision in the case of Bharatha Matha v. R Vijaya Renganathan (2010 INSC 328) had denied these children any right to coparcenary property.
The Supreme Court overturned earlier ruling and ruled that children from void or voidable marriages are considered legitimate and thus entitled to inherit their parents’ property under Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, after referring the case to a larger three-judge bench. They cannot, however, independently claim ancestral property because they are not coparceners. In addition to any self-acquired property, their right is restricted to the portion that their parent would have received in the event of a notional partition under Section 6(3) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
