Property rights of kids born of live-ins defined

The Supreme Court has said that children from live-in relationships can claim inheritance of the property that their parents acquire by their own resources. But, they can’t become shareholders in the undivided joint Hindu family.

Explaining the reformative section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act, the court said, “The illegitimate children, including succession to the properties of their parents, have to be treated as legitimate”.

They cannot, succeed to the properties of any other relation. A bench of justices BS Chauhan and Swantanter Kumar passed this ruling while quashing a Madras high court judgment that ignored the evidence on record and held that mere live-in-relationship between the two parties would lead the presumption of marriage between them.

After the death of her bachelor brother Muthu Reddiar who died without leaving a will in 1974, his sister Peria Mariammal filed the suit against one Rengammal who had claimed she was a live-in partner of Reddiar and from that relationship she had two children who also shareholder in Reddiar’s property.