TANNERU VENKAYAMMA Vs. TANNERU GANGAYYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff is the appellant. The appeal arises out of a suit instituted by the plaintiff, the widowed daughter-in-law, against the 1 defendant, her father-in-law, and the other members of the family for a partition and separate possession of her husband's share of the properties specified in Schedules A, B, C and D of the plaint.

(2.) The 1 defendant had married two wives. By his first wife, the 6 defendant, he had two sons Sriramulu and Punnayya. Sriramulu died in 1911. His son is the 4 defendant Punnayya died in 1923. His widow is the plaintiff. 5 defendant is the brother of the 6 defendant and brother-in-law of the 1 defendant. Defendants 2 and 3 are the children of the 1 defendant by his second wife.

(3.) Schedule A of the plaint comprises properties gifted by the 5 defendant under Ex. A to the 1 defendant, Punnayya, the deceased husband of the plaintiff, and the 4 defendant, the grandson of the 1 defendant; B schedule comprises properties that were subsequently acquired by the 1 defendant; C schedule comprises the ancestral properties of the family; and D schedule consists of debts for which promissory notes and bonds were taken in the name of the plaintiff's deceased husband. The plaintiff's case as regards the C schedule properties has been given up before us. As regards the A, B and D schedule properties, the plaintiff's case is that the " gift properties " comprised in the A schedule were taken by the donees as tenants-in-common, that the B schedule properties are accretions to the properties in the A schedule, being acquired out of their income, and that the outstandings in the D schedule arose out of the management of A and B schedule properties by her husband. If this contention of the plaintiff is true, she would be entitled to one-third share in the suit properties. But there is a further contention that owing to the operation of a defeasance clause in the gift deed the 1 defendant forfeited his share in the gift properties in favour of his son and grandson (plaintiff's husband and the 4 defendant) with the result that these two took the properties in two equal shares. For this reason the plaintiff claimed a half share in all the suit properties. The case of the contesting defendants is that the gift by the 5 defendant did not confer a tenancv-in-common on the donees but only a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship of the coparcenary type and that even if the gift constituted the donees tenants- in-common they contended that the properties were thrown into the common stock and treated as joint family properties and were consequently impressed with the character of such properties and that the properties being undivided the plaintiff is not entitled to claim any share in them.