One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.
Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.
TL;DR: Your mother and her sister have exactly the same right to your grandmother's property as their six brothers. A co-operative society's old sale deed or share certificate does not take away a daughter's share in ancestral property. If the property is still undivided and no release deed was ever signed, the family can file a partition suit and ask the court to stop the sale while the case runs.
The sale deed was already typed when the family heard about it. In February 2024, Nikhil Deshpande's mother, Sunita, was told over a Sunday lunch in Kothrud that her six brothers had decided to sell the flat their mother had left behind. The flat stood in the name of Kamlabai, who had died in 2003. The brothers' reasoning sounded final: the society's old sale deed listed only male members, so the
Nobody sent Sunita a notice. Nobody asked her to sign a release. As far as she knows, no document bearing her signature exists — not a relinquishment, not a gift deed, not a consent letter to the society. If that holds, everything else follows from it. If it does not — if there is a paper somewhere with her thumb impression on it from 2004 — the case changes completely.
Her sister wanted to file a police complaint the same week. Sunita wanted to wait until after a family wedding. That was three weeks. We only have one side of this story: what the society's register actually says, what the 2003 succession looked like on paper, and whether Kamlabai left a will are all things Sunita has told us but not yet shown us.
The flat was still unsold when she called. That is the whole of our advantage right now, and it will not last.
Do daughters have an equal share in their mother's property?
Short answer: yes, and the six brothers' claim that the society's old sale deed settles the matter does not survive contact with the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.
But the answer depends on what kind of property this is, so let us do it in order.
Key facts as we understand them
- Kamlabai died in 2003. She left eight children — six sons and two daughters.
- The flat was in her name. There is no suggestion she left a registered will.
- The society's records, according to the brothers, list only male members.
- No release deed or relinquishment has been signed by either daughter, so far as we know.
- A sale is being negotiated. No sale deed appears to have been registered yet.
First: whose flat was it, and how did Kamlabai come to hold it?
Two routes, and they end in the same place but travel differently.
Route one — it was Kamlabai's own flat. If she bought it herself or it was gifted or devised to her, then on her death in 2003, intestate, it devolves under Section 15 of the Hindu Succession Act read with the Schedule. Sons and daughters are both Class I heirs. They take simultaneously and in equal shares. Eight children, eight shares. That is not a close question.
Route two — it came to her from her husband or from his family. Here the coparcenary rules come in, and after the 2005 amendment to Section 6 of the Act, a daughter is a coparcener by birth in her own right. The Supreme Court settled in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020) that this does not depend on whether the father was alive on 9 September 2005, which was the confusion the earlier Prakash v. Phulavati line had created. Note also Section 14, which makes a female Hindu's holding absolute rather than a limited estate.
Sunita's family may not know which route applies. It usually does not matter to the outcome — daughters take a share either way — but it matters to how the plaint is drafted and which documents we lead with.
Does the society's old sale deed or share certificate decide ownership?
No. This is the single biggest misunderstanding in the whole dispute.
A co-operative society's share register tells you who the member is. It tells you who pays maintenance, who votes at the general body meeting, who the society will deal with. It does not decide title to the flat. Title is decided by the registered conveyance and, where the owner has died, by succession.
The same goes for a nomination. If Kamlabai had nominated one son in the society's records, that nomination tells the society who to hand the share certificate to. It does not make that son the owner of the flat, and it does not shrink the sisters' shares by a rupee.
So when the brothers say "the deed lists only male members, therefore the sale can go ahead," what they are really saying is that the society's paperwork has always been wrong. That is not a defence. It is a description of how things were done in a lot of families, and it was wrong then too.
Can the brothers sell without the sisters?
A co-owner can sell his own undivided share. He cannot sell what he does not own.
If the sale deed is executed by six brothers alone, the buyer steps into their shoes and gets whatever they had — six undivided shares out of eight, if that is the arithmetic. He does not get a clean flat. He becomes a co-owner alongside two women he has never met. In practice, most banks will not lend against that, and most sensible buyers walk away once they know.
Which means the honest advice to the sisters is not "you will win." It is that the buyer is the brothers' weakest point, not the brothers themselves.
What can actually be done, and in what order
Step 1 — Get the papers before talking to anyone
- Kamlabai's death certificate, and her husband's if he predeceased her.
- The registered sale deed under which Kamlabai held the flat, or the chain of title.
- A copy of the society's share certificate and the society's record of the deceased member's heirs.
- Property tax receipts, maintenance bills, and the latest society bill.
- A written request to the society for the register of members and any transfer application filed by the brothers.
- Any will, nomination form, or writing Kamlabai left.
Ask the society in writing. A written request creates a date, and the reply — or the silence — becomes evidence.
Step 2 — A legal notice, to the right people
Not just to the brothers. A notice that goes only to family reads as a family quarrel. The notice should go to the brothers, and separately to the proposed purchaser and the society, stating that the sisters are co-owners, that no relinquishment has been executed, and that any sale of the whole flat will be challenged to the extent of their shares.
That single letter is often what stops a deal, because a buyer who is about to part with money does not want to buy litigation.
Step 3 — A partition suit with an injunction application
The suit asks the court to divide the flat by metes and bounds or, more commonly for a flat, to order a sale and distribute the proceeds. Alongside it, an application under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure asks for an interim injunction restraining alienation pending the suit.
Courts grant that on the familiar three tests: a prima facie case, balance of convenience, and irreparable injury. A daughter of a Hindu who died intestate with no relinquishment on record has a decent prima facie case. The other two tests are usually where these applications are won or lost.
There is also Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act. Once the suit is filed, a sale during its pendency is subject to the outcome — the buyer takes the property with the litigation attached. That is why filing early matters more than filing perfectly.
Step 4 — If the sale has already been registered
Different problem, and a harder one. The options narrow to a suit challenging the sale deed to the extent of the sisters' shares, a suit against the brothers for their share of the sale proceeds, or a partition suit naming the buyer as a co-owner.
People often want to file a cheating case at this stage. Sometimes that is the right call. More often it is not — a family property dispute with a civil remedy available is usually treated as a civil dispute, and an FIR that ends in a closure or a quashing order makes the civil case harder, not easier. This is a decision to take with a lawyer who has read the sale deed, not before.
What it costs in time
The interim injunction application is the only fast part. In a busy district court, a first effective hearing on an ad interim application can take weeks, sometimes longer. The partition suit itself will run for years. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
That timeline is the real argument for settlement. If the flat is worth a known figure and the sisters' shares come to a calculable amount, taking a share of the sale proceeds now — with a registered release deed drafted properly — is frequently better than a decree in 2031. It is not a surrender. It is arithmetic.
The counter-argument is equally real: once you sign a release, you are done. There is no coming back if the price was low.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a deadline to file a partition suit?
A suit for partition of undivided property is generally not barred while the property remains joint, because the right to demand partition keeps arising. But a suit to set aside a sale deed that has already been registered is a different animal, and it carries a limitation period counted from when the sisters had knowledge. Long delay also makes an injunction harder to get — courts ask why you waited. This is exactly the kind of question that turns on when the sale was registered and what the sisters knew and when.
My brother says the property was sold years ago and is now in a stranger's name. Is it too late?
Possibly. It depends on whether the buyer was a bona fide purchaser for value without notice, how long ago the sale happened, and whether the sisters knew. A purchaser who paid full market price to a co-owner who held himself out as sole owner, and who had no reason to know about the sisters, is in a much stronger position than a brother's friend who bought cheap. Take the sale deed and the date to a lawyer before doing anything else.
Can a daughter be disinherited by a will?
A Hindu male or female can will away self-acquired property to anyone. But a will has to be proved — it must be the deceased's genuine, signed, attested document, and the propounder has to explain suspicious circumstances. A will produced for the first time when a buyer appears, on a property the family has treated as joint for two decades, tends to attract scrutiny.
Does it matter that the flat is in a co-operative society and not a plot of land?
Not to the succession. It matters to execution — a flat is easier to sell and divide than agricultural land, so courts are more willing to order a sale and split the money rather than physically divide anything.
Should the sisters file a police complaint?
Not as a first step. A civil suit with an injunction does the work that an FIR is usually filed to do — it freezes the property. If forgery is involved, if a signature has been fabricated on a relinquishment or a society transfer form, that is a different matter and it should be pursued. Get the documents first, then decide.
What if there is nothing to argue?
Then we say so. If a properly executed release deed signed by both sisters turns up, or if Kamlabai left a valid will devising the flat to the sons, there may be no case at all. Finding that out in a week costs far less than finding it out after a suit is filed.
What to send us
If this resembles your situation, send a short note with: the deceased's name and date of death, the date on which you first learned of the proposed sale or of a sale that has already happened, and a copy of any sale deed, share certificate, or notice you have. If a sale deed has been registered, the registration date and the sub-registrar's office matter most of all.
Two lines describing the family and one scanned document is enough to start. You can reach the chamber through /contact-us or fix a time at /book.
Disclaimer: This is general information about Indian law and procedure, not legal advice on your own situation. Partition, succession and limitation questions turn on documents and dates that differ from family to family, and nothing here should be acted on before a lawyer has read your papers.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India