Kinship (Meaning, Types of Kinship, Degrees of Kinship, Kinship Usages, Kinship & Descent)

Who counts as your ‘nearest relative’ for the purpose of inheriting property, or being consulted before an organ donation, or being barred from marrying you under the rule against marrying within your own gotra? Every one of those legal questions is really a kinship question, and Hindu succession law in particular is built directly on the degrees of kinship this topic defines.

In two minutes

Kinship is the web of relationships created by blood (consanguinity) and marriage (affinity) that structures rights, duties and social identity, and it is organised by type, by degree of closeness, by rules of descent, and by specific customary usages that govern how relatives are expected to behave toward one another.

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