Hindu widows are empowered to sell, gift, mortgage or waste the inherited property

One of the greatest traumas that a widow confronts after the demise of her spouse is the issue of shelter. How and where would she be able to live? In case, she is living with her in-laws, she is simply tossed out of life and it becomes so troublesome for her that it gets unimaginable for her to stay there.

She might be welcomed in her parental home only at the kindness of relatives and others. It is along these lines vital that some thoughts must be given to this situation so that a safe house can be sorted out throughout the life time of her spouse. It is necessary for all the women to get a house or a piece of living place living secured while their husbands are alive.

By virtue of section 14 (1) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 women become absolute owners of the property they inherited. They could sell it, gift it, mortgage it, waste it. After a women’s death her property would be divided amongst her heirs. A female’s heirs were different to a male’s heirs. In the first class they were sons, daughters and husbands.

The Supreme Court in Raghubir Singh & Others V. Gulab Singh & Others, Air (1998) SC 2401 held that a right to maintenance of Hindu female flows from the social and temporal relationship between the husband and wife and that right in the case of widow is pre-existing right which existed under the shastric Hindu law even before the passing of Hindu Married Women’s Right to separate Residence and Maintenance Act, 1946. These Acts only recognized the position as/was existing under the shastnc Hindu Law and gave it a “statutory backing”.

This way, if a Hindu widow possesses the property of her husband, she has the right to be maintained out of having entitlement to retain the possession of that property other than her right to be maintained.

The Supreme Court followed the earlier case of V. Tulasamma V. Sesha Reddy (1977)3 SCC 99 also Ram Kali V. Choudhri Ajit Shankar (1997)9 SCC 613, and held that by force of section 14(1) of Hindu Succession Act, 1956 the widow’s limited interest gets automati­cally enlarged into an absolute right notwithstanding any restriction placed under the document or instrument.

Whereas section 14(2) has (field) of its own and applies to instruments, decrees, awards, gifts etc. which creates an independent or new title in favor of the female heirs for the first time. It has no application to cases where the instrument/document either declares or recognizes or confirms her share in property or her “pre-existing right to maintenance” out of that property.

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