Does a second spouse have rights to her husband’s property?

I’ve 4 siblings. After our mom died in 2005, my father remarried in 2006. My father died on 3 August 2021.  He had invested secretly in actual property. What are our rights and people of our stepmother on his properties?  My father’s siblings solid his signature and offered off the property inherited from my grandfather.  How can we get this again?

— Name withheld on request

We have assumed that your father was a Hindu and he died intestate i.e., with no Will. The Hindu Succession Act (HSA) lays down how the property of a Hindu male will cross in such circumstances.Given that your father married one other lady after the demise of his first spouse, it seems that the second marriage of your father was a sound marriage (assuming the authorized necessities and registration have been executed fully). Assuming so, his kids in addition to his spouse (i.e., stepmother and his kids) can be considered ‘Class I legal heirs’ underneath the HSA and due to this fact, each the stepmother and all the youngsters would have an equal share in your father’s property. Also, 1/sixth share of your father’s property will devolve on her.

 For your grandfather property, this might require additional dialogue along with your lawyer, because the legislation round step moms and ancestral property continues to be in flux.  In India, there isn’t any central depository or mechanism the place one can discover out about all of the classes of property/investments held by a person. As regards immovable properties, an inspection of the books maintained by the involved workplace of the sub-registrar might be thought-about to search out out about his investments in immovable properties. If you’ve entry to his financial institution data, it’s also possible to attempt to discover out about his investments in properties by way of them. Further, it’s also possible to test his earlier tax and associated filings to search out out about his actual property holdings.

The kids must provoke applicable authorized proceedings in opposition to the daddy’s siblings to say the share of the daddy in grandfather’s property. The nature of authorized proceedings to be initiated must be analysed based mostly on the related income data and possession paperwork accessible with the youngsters. This will likely be a time consuming and costly endeavour, so it’s possible you’ll contemplate mediation as a sooner treatment.

Rishabh Shroff is associate, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.

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