Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956

A couple in Thane take in the child of a relative who has passed away. Everyone at the Diwali gathering calls the child their son, but the school asks for a document and a relative mutters about a share in the flat. Is the child legally theirs, and from which day? The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956 answers that in Chapter II, and then, in Chapter III, it answers a second question that families often mix up with it: who must pay to keep a wife, a child or an old parent afloat?

In two minutes

The Act makes adoption among Hindus a statutory act with four requisites (capacity to take, capacity to give, capacity to be taken, and the other conditions), after which the child is fully the adoptive parents' child, and it separately codifies maintenance for a wife, a widowed daughter-in-law, children, aged parents and dependants.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Family Law – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.