Property & Succession

The Kerala High Court, in K.M. Cherian v. Ammini [2025:KER:49425] has reiterated the well-established legal principle that a document which is void ab initio (void from the beginning) is a legal nullity (non-est) and does not need to be formally set aside or declared void by a court.

When a husband purchases property using his own funds but registers it in his wife's name, Indian law presumes it to be a gift to the wife, making her the absolute owner. This legal principle is known as the "presumption of advancement."

In Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma [(2020) 9 SCC 1], a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that daughters acquire coparcenary rights by birth. Consequently, for a daughter to claim these coparcenary rights, her father need not have been alive when the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, came into force.

The Supreme Court (SC), in Estate Officer, Haryana Urban Development Authority and Ors. v. Nirmala Devi [2025 INSC 843] states that a grant of mandatory injunction under Section 39 of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 (SRA) is discretionary, and can be granted only upon the breach of an enforceable legal obligation.

In N P Rajani v Radha Nambidi Parambath [2025:KER:49346], the High Court of Kerala declared that the daughter of a Hindu, who dies after 20.12.2004, in the State of Kerala is entitled to equal share in the ancestral property (but not in the individual property) if no partition has taken place prior to the date, in spite of the enactment of the JFSAA in 1975.

Any property or a share in any joint property owned by a minor, cannot be sold or disposed of by other means, by the natural guardian of the minor, without taking permission from the court. The disposal of property of a minor or creating a charge on it, by the natural guardian under Hindu law is governed by Section 8 of HMGA and Section 29 of the HMGA.

Unregistered sale agreements, while not transferring ownership, are admissible as evidence in a suit for specific performance to establish the existence of a contract. This admissibility is governed by the interplay between Section 17 and Section 49 of the Registration Act. However, such agreements cannot be used to claim ownership or title to the property without a decree for specific performance, as held by the High Court of Kerala in Shaju v. Victory Granite Bricks Pvt. Ltd. & Another [2025:KER:45599].

The mutation of the property and acceptance of land tax done under the Transfer of Registry Rules, 1966 (in Kerala) will, by itself, neither create or extinguish the title, nor has it any presumptive value on the title.

A legal heir, such as the wife, son daughter etc, has no right in the self-acquired property of any of his/her parents so long as they are alive. The owner of the self-acquired property can dispose of the self-acquired property in any manner he wishes to do.

The Supreme Court, in the matter of K. Gopi v. The Sub-Registrar & Others [2025 INSC 462], has held that a Registering Authority, under the Registration Act of 1908, is not empowered to refuse the registration of a sale or transfer deed on the grounds that the executant has failed to produce prior title documents or that the executant's title to the property is otherwise unsubstantiated.