Bai Parvati v. Tarwadi Dolatram

Batty, J.:— The plaintiff in this case is a widow. Her husband, Motiram, died in the lifetime of his father, Ishwar Vithal, who bequeathed all his property to his nephew the defendant. None of the property is shown to have been the ancestral property of the deceased, and the will is not disputed. The plaintiff seeks in this suit to recover maintenance from the defendant, the devisee of her farther-in-law. The Court of first instance declared plaintiff entitled to maintenance at the rate of Rs. 4 per mensem and to Rs. 84 as arrears, and also declared her right to a house for residence. The lower Appellate Court, however, reversed this decision of the Court of first instance and rejected the claim, holding that the widow would not have been entitled to claim maintenance from the self-acquired property of her father-in-law during the lifetime of her father-in-law, and that whatever moral obligation there might have been on the fathar-in-law to afford such maintenance, or whatever legal obligation might from that moral obligation have devolved on the heir of the farther-in-law, the defendant having acquired not as heir, but as devisee under a will, from the father-in-law, was under no obligation whatever to maintain the plaintiff, no condition requiring him to maintain the plaintiff having been imposed on him either by the will or otherwise.

It has been contended for the plaintiff in this appeal that, the principal on which the moral obligation of the father-in-law to afford maintenance is converted into a legal obligation binding on the heir on the devolution to him of the estate, cannot be shown on any reasonable or consistent grounds to have less force in a case where the estate of the father-in-law has passed by devise instead of devolving on an heir, and special stress has been laid upon the remarks of Mr. Justice Ranade in the case of Yamunabai v. Mumbai, and upon the decision of the Madras High Court in Rangammal v. Echammal(2) The grounds of decision in the first mentioned of these two cases—Yamunabai v. Manubai—however hardly go to support the appellant's contention. That judgment points out that the spiritual benefit of the deceased owner, which the Allahabad High Court regards as the ground on which the moral obligation in the deceased is intensified into legal obligation in the heir, and the legal obligation on the heir to provide out of ancestral property for those whom his ancestors were bound morally or legally to maintain, which the Calcutta High Court regards as the ground of the heir's liability in such cases both lead, though by divergent routes, to the same conclusion, viz., that the spiritual benefit of the deceased entails on the heir a special obligation when he takes the estate. And the judgment further proceeds to indicate that it is not the fact of the property being ancestral, but of its having been inherited from a source on which the widow's husband had an unextinguished claim, that renders that property liable for the widow's maintenance. Thus, the reasoning throughout the judgment seems specially to emphasize the importance of the mode of devolution by inheritance in determining the liability of the new holder, and it is specially observed that in the case of property self-acquired by the deceased owner, if the heir had been a testamentary devisee, the incidents of self-acquisition would protect the property even in his hands Towards the conclusion of the judgment it is true that the liability of a father-in-iaw to support even from his self-acquired property the widow of a son not separated from him in interest, is said to be founded on texts which have in such cases mandatory and not merely “preceptive” force. And it is urged as a corollary from these remarks that the person claiming from a father-in-law who was under the obligation arising from such mandatory texts, would also be under a legal obligation to maintain the widow of an unseparated son of the testator. But it is to be observed, in the first place, that the assertion of a legal obligation operating from the mandatory force of such texts, on the self-acquired estate of an unseparated father-in-law, was by no means necessary for the decision of the case in Yamumbai v. Manubai, in which the passage referred to occurs; and in the second place the dictum, if it were intended as more than a statement of recognised spiritual obligation, would be distinctly in conflict with the law as laid down in the Full Bench decision in Savitribai v. Luxmibai where it was held that the widow is not entitled to maintenance from her husband's relatives, whether they were separated or unseparated from him at the time of bis death, if they have not any ancestral estate, or estate belonging to him in their hands—Savitribai v. Luxmibai. And thirdly it is to be noted that even supposing such texts to have such mandatory force as to operate upon the self-acquired property of a separated father-in-law, yet the principles recognised as an earlier part of the judgment in Yamunabai v. Manubai(3) would suffice to show that in the hands of the testamentary devisee, the incidents of self-acquisition would protect such property even in his hands.

To accept the position that the widow of an unseparated son coaid claim maintenance as a legal right from the self-acquired property of her father-in-law while it was still in his bands, would be to revert to the doctrine enunciated in cases distinctly overruled by the Full Bench decision in Savitribai v. Luxmibai—and this we are not at liberty to do, And if there is no such legal obligation on the father-in-law in such circumstances, there is no authority whatever for the position that a testamentary disposition of such property by the father-in-law, in exercise of his “unrestricted power of disposing of it by gift or devising it by will,” would attach to it any legal obligation in the hands of the devisee any more than a gift thereof inter vivos would attach thereto such legal obligation in the hands of the donee. The ripening of the moral obligation into a legal obligation on devolution by inheritance is due to the operation of principles peculiar to the doctrines of Hindu law which regards as quasi trustee for the family, and for the spiritual benefit of the deceased owner, a member into whose hands property comes by virtue of his status as a member of the family. But property acquired by valid testamentary disposition is not governed by the rules of the Hindu law of inheritance, and when the power of making such disposition is unrestricted, it is difficult to conceive any consistent ground on which the devisee could be held bound by an obligation from which the testator had power to relieve him and by the bequest had actually relieved him. In the case of Rangammal v. Echammal, the remarks relied on for the appellant in the present ease appear to be mere obiter dicta— suggestions thrown out on which the judgment distinctly stated it was not necessary to found the decision. It does not appear to be necessary in the present case to consider the history of the doctrine at present accepted in this Court and recapitulated in the judgment in Yamunabai v. Manubai—as it seems clear that the propositions contained in that case afford a sufficient answer to the argument offered on behalf of the appellant.

The decree of the lower Appellate Court is therefore confirmed and the appeal is rejected with costs. The plaintiff is to pay the Court fees throughout, which would have been paid by her if she had not been permitted to sue and appeal as a pauper.

Decree confirmed.