PUTLIBAI Vs. SORABJI NAOROJI GAMADIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decree, made on April 8, 1920, of the High Court at Bombay, in its appellate capacity, affirming with variations a decree dated March 14, 1919, of Macleod J., the Judge of first instance. The questions decided arose in a suit for the construction and administration of the trusts of the will of the late Naoroji Jehangir Gamadia, who left a large estate, mainly in Bombay. The chief questions which their Lordships have to decide are whether certain provisions made by the will for persons other than the testator's sons and daughters, relating to residential property, are valid, and whether other and more general dispositions also made by the will can be treated as effective.

(2.) The Courts below have decided that all the dispositions referred to, with certain limited exceptions, are invalid, and that consequently the property is now presently divisible between the testator's sons equally under a gift of the residuary estate, but subject for a limited period to a right of maintenance out of the income of such persons as during that period may be entitled to the benefit of such of the excepted dispositions of residential property as have been found to be valid.

(3.) The suit was originally brought by the first respondent against the respondents Nos. 4, 2, 3, 5 and 6, and the present appellant. The respondents Nos. 7, 8 and 9 were added as defendants by order. The respondent No. 10 is a child of the first appellant, and was added as a defendant during the proceedings in the appellate Court below.