Bringing all legal heirs on board

[Sri Kanitkar]

Dear Sir,

1. My father made a WILL favouring me, my wife and her relatives, but excluding my sister.
2. My sister criminally intimidated me to sign a ‘Registered Family Deed’, dealing with the assets/estate of my father. In return of some monthly compensation, I gave up all my rights to my father’s estate. However, since this Family Deed was made when my father was alive, it is void ab initio as it falls u/s 6(a) of the Transfer of Property Act. I have sent my sister a legal notice to cancel this Family Deed and I have stopped accepting the monthly compensation.
3. My sister has forcibly and illegally occupied 80% of my father’s property.
4. My father has expired recently. My sister has filed a civil suit and a chamber summons, where she is the next friend of the plaintiff (my father). However, after the demise of my father and after I have cancelled the Family Deed, I have placed these facts on the record of the court as a reply to her chamber summons.
5. My advocate says that now all the ‘heirs of my father will have to be brought on board’. Please explain me this term. Does it mean that all the legatees of my father will become the plaintiff? Or does it mean that my father’s Class-I heirs will become the plaintiffs?
6. The Registrar (Original Side) has told us to file a Written Statement only after the Chamber Summons is decided.
7. What will be logical outcome of the Chamber Summons.
Thanks & Regards.

[Dr. Ashok Dhamija]

It is not possible to reply to questions relating to facts unless one has seen the detailed facts of the case. Moreover, when you have a regularly engaged advocate for your case to whom you must be paying his professional fee, you should ask him for the explanation of the term informed to you by him, if it is not clear to you.

Yet, I’ll reply to your legal question. Where a party to a suit dies during the pendency of the suit, steps to bring his legal representatives on record have to be taken in terms of the provisions of Order 22 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Order 22 uses the words “legal representative” which is defined in Section 2(11) of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) as under:

“(11) “legal representative” means a person who in law represents the estate of a deceased person, and includes any person who inter-meddles with the estate of the deceased and where a party sues or is sued in a representative character the person on whom the estate devolves on the death of the party so suing or sued;”

As you may notice, it is a very wide definition.

In the case of Andhra Bank Ltd. v. Srinivasan, AIR 1962 SC 232, the Supreme Court has held that the term is not limited to administrators, executors and heirs and that it must be held to include any person who in law represents the estate of a deceased judgment-debtor.

In the above case, the Supreme Court further held as under:

“Mr Sastri concedes that a universal legatee would be a legal representative and he does not challenge that the person who intermeddles even with a part of the estate of the deceased is also a legal representative; but his argument is that a legatee who obtains only a part of the estate of the deceased under a will cannot be said to represent his estate and is therefore not a legal representative under Section 2(11). We are not impressed by this argument. The whole object of widening the scope of the expression “legal representative” which the present definition is intended to achieve would be frustrated if it is held that legatees of different portions of the estate of a deceased do not fall within its purview. Logically it is difficult to understand how such a contention is consistent with the admitted position that persons who intermeddle with a part of the estate are legal representatives. Besides, if such a construction is accepted it would be so easy for the estate of a deceased to escape its legitimate liability to pay the debts of a deceased debtor only if the debtor takes the precaution of making several legacies to different persons by his will. Besides, as a matter of construction, if different intermeddlers can represent the estate different legatees can likewise represent it. In regard to the intermeddlers they are said to represent the estate even though they are in possession of parcels of the estate of the deceased and so there should be no difficulty in holding that the clause “a person who in law represents the estate of a deceased person” must include different legatees under the will. There is no justification for holding that the “estate” in the context must mean the whole of the estate. Therefore, we are satisfied that the plain construction of Section 2(11) is against Mr Sastri’s argument, apart from the fact that considerations of logic and common sense are equally against it.”

In view of the above, it should be clear that legal representatives of your father would include all legatees of your father, all Class-I heirs of your father, and may be other persons who satisfy the above conditions.

     

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Dr. Ashok Dhamija is a New Delhi based Supreme Court Advocate and author of law books. Read more about him by clicking here. List of his Forum Replies. List of his other articles. List of his Quora Answers. List of his YouTube Videos.

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