Legal Reference Library

The Madras High Court has held that a widow is equally entitled, even after remarrying, to receive the Provident Fund amount from her late husband’s account. The court reiterated the fact that the bar under Section 24 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, was deleted in September 2005, upholding her right to claim herself as a legal representative of her deceased husband. The petitioner had remarried following her husband’s death in 2001. In 2004, on an appeal by the mother of the deceased, the Principal Subordinate Judge had given her the sole right to obtain the amount lying in her son’s Provident Fund account. The widow had preferred an appeal against the said order. Justice N Kirubakaran reiterated the provisions of the Succession Act, 1956, and the Hindu Widow Re-marriage Act, 1856, and held that, ‘the right of the widow not only to remarry, but also to inherit the property of the late husband has been declared and the women, including widows, are treated as co-parcener on par with t...

The Supreme Court has ruled that a widow can be a manager of a joint family in some particular circumstances. An apex court bench gave the ruling while deciding a property dispute between cousins of a family in Uttar Pradesh in a suit filed in 1978 in favour of the mother who bought the property. A bench comprising justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana said, “Such a role (as manager) necessarily has to be distinguished from that of a Karta which position the Hindu widow cannot assume by virtue of her disentitlement to be a coparcener in the Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) of her husband. Regrettably the position remains unaltered even after the amendment of the Hindu Succession Act in 2005.” “Though women could not be treated as Karta of a joint family, she can be a manager of a joint family, in some particular circumstances,” it said. The bench also held that the expression ‘Manager’ can be understood as denoting a role distinct from that of the Karta. The case dates back to 1978, whe...