ADIRAJU SURYANARAYANA MURTHY Vs. ADIRAJU VENKATA LAKSHMAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal raises an important question relating lo the interpretation of Sections 21 and 22 of the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956 and the right of the daughter-in- law to be maintained by the legatee of the Separate property of her father- in-law in :a case where the father-in- Law had died after commencement ot the above Act.

(2.) The defendant is the appellant. The suit was filed for partition or in the alternative for maintenance by the respondent on the allegation that the defendant who is her husband's brother was in possession of joint family property and that therefore she is entitled to a share therein. The defendant who is the plaintiff's husband's brother contended that the property belonged to his father as his self-acquired and separate property and that the same has been bequeathed to him under a will executed by his father. The trial Court held that the property is the self-acquired property of the defendant's father in which the plaintiff's husband had no right and that the same has been bequeathed by a will to the defendant. It negatived the plaintiffs claim for partition and also for maintenance. The plaintiff preferred an appeal to this Court which came up before our learned brother Jeevan Reddy, J who held that the property was the self-acquired property of the defendant's father but that on the death of the plaintiff's father-in-law the moral obligation he had to maintain the plaintiff ripened into a legal obligation and that it did not make any difference whether the defendant got the property by intestate succession or by testamentary succession and that the defendant was liable to pay maintenance. Our learned brother allowed the appeal and remitted the matter for determining the quantum of maintenance having regard to the income from the property and the income out of some other land settled upon the plaintiff by her husband. As the right to maintenance of the plaintiff was declared by the learned single Judge the defendant has pre- ferred this appeal.

(3.) The only question that has been urged before us by Mr. T. Veerabhadrayya, the learned counsel for the appellant is that Section 22 of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act (hereinafter called the Act) imposes an obligation on those who succeed by intestate succession and not on those who obtain the property under a will from the father- in-Law He says that whether the bequest was in favour of the legal heir or a stranger it did not matter and the legatee cannot be burdened with the obligation to maintain the daughter-in- law. The respondent was not represented and we requested Sri J V Suryanarayana Rao to assist us as Amicus Curaie once again as he had done before our learned brother. We are grateful to him for the assistance rendered to us. Subsequent to the judgment under appeal before us there has been a judgment of the Full Bench of this Court in T A Laxminarasamamba vs T Sundaramma and Others (1) A I R 1981 A P 88 which has over-ruled an earlier Division Bench judgment of the Madras High Court in Sankara Murthy vs Subbamma (2) A I R 1938 Madras, 914, The Full Bench made a reference (Para 78) to the judgment of our learned brother Jeevan Reddy, J. in the present case (reported in 1979 (2) APLJ 104) and distinguished it on the ground that that case was one where the father-in-law died after the Act while the question before the Full Bench was in respect of a claim against a father-in-law who died before the Act.