DECEASED THAZHETHERANJOLI KOZHIPRO ACHUTHAN NAYAR S HEIRS AND CHILDREN VOLA VEETTIL KOTTAPURATH JANAKI AMMA Vs. TAZHETHERANJOLI KOZHIPRO RAMAN NAYAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question is whether the appellants, born of an ordinary Marumakattayam union, are entitled to inherit the self-acquired property of their deceased father. Both the Courts held that they were not.

(2.) The law of intestacy ordinarily applied to those who follow the Marumakattayam system is that the self-acquired property of a male passes to his tarwad upon his death. It has always been held that the customary union between persons subject to the Marumakattayam law is not a legal marriage and that, consequently, the offspring are not legitimate children who can claim to inherit their father's property under the ordinary Hindu law. Act IV of 1896 made such unions legal marriages provided that they were registered, with the effect of making children both before and after the registration legitimate. Act XXII of 1933 went a step further and recognised such unions whether they were registered or not, provided that the union: (1) had been solemnised with the customary ceremonies and was subsisting on the date when the act came, into force; or (2) was so solemnjsfid after the Act came into force; or (3) had been registered as a marriage under the Act of 1896, and was subsisting on the date when the 1933 Act came into force.

(3.) The devolution of property upon the death of a male following the Maru-makattayam law upon intestacy is set out in Section 19. The principal question argued here is whether the expression "children" in Section 19 means children of any union, however irregular, or whether it means lgitimate children. No authority is necessary to show that the ordinary meaning of "children" in statutes is legitimate children, unless the contrary is indicated in the statute itself. If it: were otherwise, then Section 19 would give a right to their father's property to the offspring of even adulterous or fleeting connections. If "children" in Section 19 means legitimate children, then the appellants can inherit their father's property only if they are the offspring of a legal marriage between their parents. Ordinarily, as I have already said, the children of such union are not the offspring of a legal marriage; so that the appellants can only succeed if the union between their parents has become a legal marriage by statute. The only Act by which they claim that the union between their parents become a legal marriage is Act XXII of 1933. This Act, however, applies only to subsisting marriages. The very wording of Section 4(1).(b) ( iii) says so expressly. A union that has been terminated by the death of one of the parties to the union is no longer a union and so does not subsist.