Once a formal partition or division of the property takes place, it stops being ancestral property and becomes separate, self-acquired property for each individual.
In Uttam v. Saubhag Singh & Ors., AIR 2016 SC 1169, the Supreme Court held that once joint family property is distributed under Section 8 of the Hindu Succession Act on principles of intestate succession, it ceases to retain its character as joint family property in the hands of those who inherit it — they hold it thereafter as tenants-in-common, not as joint tenants, reading Sections 4, 8, and 19 of the Act together.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed this settled position in Angadi Chandranna v. Shankar, 2025 INSC 532.
