Inheritance (For other than Parsis) Meaning of Intestacy Meaning of Consanguinity Rules of Inheritance

A Christian businessman in Mumbai dies suddenly. There is no will. He leaves a wife, two children and an elderly mother. Does his widow get everything, or must she share? Could his mother claim anything at all? Chapter II of Part V of the Indian Succession Act gives fixed shares to fixed people, in a fixed order, and once you learn the order you can solve any such problem in a few lines.

In two minutes

When a person outside the excluded communities and the Parsis dies intestate, the estate goes first to the widow or widower and lineal descendants in set shares, and failing them to parents, brothers and sisters and then the nearest kindred (Indian Succession Act 1925, ss.32–49).

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