JANAKI AMMAL Vs. NARAYANASAMI AIYER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from a decree of the High Court of Judicature at Madras of August 23, 1912, modifying the decree of the Subordinate Judge of Mayavaram, dated October 28, 1907.

(2.) THE suit was brought with reference to the estate of one Ramasami Iyer, of Konerirajapuram, who died intestate on June 24, 1906. It is not disputed that the widow holds the property under the Hindu law as "a widow's estate." The mother of the late owner is the person entitled to succeed should she survive this widow. On the expiry of these lives the estate will descend to the next reversionary heir of the deceased.

(3.) THE law as to the situation of the reversionary heirs is also in substance quite clear; there is, as stated, no vesting as at the date of the husband's death, and it follows that the questions of who is the nearest reversionary heir or what is the class of reversionary heirs fall to be settled at the date of the expiry of the ownership for life or lives--that is to say, in the present case, at the death of the survivor of the appellant and her late husband's mother. Even where the Courts have proceeded, prior to the opening of the succession, to give any declaration, this has been done for special reasons only, as in the case of Thakurain Jaipal Kunwar v. Bhaiya Indar Bahadur Singh L.R. 31 Ind. Ap. 67, and--to use the language of Sir Arthur Wilson in that case--it is made clear that " whenever the succession opens by the death of the widow the present decision will have settled nothing as to who should succeed."