Joint family properties in the hands of sole surviving coparcener-If properties

[bpagrawal]

Joint family properties in the hands of sole surviving coparcener-If properties lose their character of joint family property.
It has been pointed out in Gowli Buddanna v. Commissioner of Income-tax, Mysore(1) that under the Hindu system of law a joint family may consist of a single male member and widows of deceased male members and that the property of a joint family did not cease to belong to a joint family merely because the family is represented by a single coparcener who possesses rights which an absolute owner of property may possess.To my mind it would make a mockery of the undivided family system if this temporary reduction of the coparcenary unit to a single individual were to convert what was previously joint property belonging to an undivided family into the separate property of the surviving coparcener. To this it may be added that it would not appear reasonable to impart to the legislature the intention to discriminate, so long as the family itself subsists, between property in the hands of a single coparcener and that in the hands of two or more coparceners."The basis of the decision was that the property which was the joint family property of the Hindu undivided family did not cease to be so because of the "temporary reduction of the coparcenary unit to a single individual". The character of the property, viz. that it was the joint property of a Hindu undivided family, remained the same.

Supreme Court of India
Sitabai & Anr vs Ram Chandra on 20 August, 1969
Equivalent citations: 1970 AIR 343, 1970 SCR (2) 1
//http://www.lawweb.in/2013/02/joint-family-properties-in-hands-of.html