The 2005 amendment to Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act made daughters coparceners in ancestral property on the same footing as sons. What it left unclear was whether the father had to be alive when the amendment took effect on 9 September 2005 - and the Supreme Court answered that question inconsistently for years, leaving families with genuinely unpredictable outcomes.
In Prakash v. Phulvati, the Court held the father did need to be living on that date. In Danamma v. Amar, a different bench reached a conflicting conclusion. A daughter’s entitlement effectively turned on which precedent a particular court followed.
Vineeta Sharma Settled It on Birth, Not Survival
Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma, decided 11 August 2020, resolved it. A larger bench overruled Prakash v. Phulvati and held that the coparcenary right arises by birth. Because it is a birthright rather than something inherited from the father, it does not depend on his being alive on any particular date - a daughter is a coparcener whether or not her father survived to September 2005.
The judgment fixed one cut-off that does still matter: partitions genuinely completed before 20 December 2004 are protected, and cannot be reopened. That date - not the father’s survival - is the boundary that determines whether an existing division stands.
The Effect Runs Backward Through Settled Arrangements
The reach is wider than it might appear, because it is retrospective in effect rather than forward-looking. Family arrangements settled years earlier on the assumption that a daughter had no coparcenary claim - and wills drafted on the same assumption about what the testator was free to dispose of - were being made against a legal position that turned out not to be the law.
Revisit any family arrangement or will drafted before August 2020 on the assumption that a daughter had no coparcenary claim. The only date that still binds is 20 December 2004, for partitions genuinely completed before it - the father’s survival to 2005 never mattered.
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