Home  /  Indian Succession Act  /  Section 50

Section 50: General principles relating to intestate succession

Indian Succession Act • Official Statutory Text & Practice Guide

Statutory Regulation
Legal Standard
Competent Court / Tribunal
Act 1925
Section 49 All 391 Sections of Indian Succession Act Section 51

Legal Commentary & Landmark Judgments: Section 50

Section 50 sets forth the general statutory principles governing the division of a Parsi intestate's estate, abolishing all distinctions between real and personal property and discarding the doctrine of primogeniture.

  • Abolition of Real vs Personal Distinction: There is no distinction between those who are related to the intestate through the father and those related through the mother, nor between real and personal property.
  • Abolition of Primogeniture: No preferential right of inheritance is accorded to the eldest child; all heirs in the same statutory class take concurrent shares.
  • Posthumous Child Equality: A child who was in the womb at the time of the death of the intestate and is subsequently born alive has the same rights as if born before the death.
Key Landmark Precedents:
  • Goolrokh Gupta v. Burjor Pardiwala (Supreme Court / High Court Rulings): Judicial decisions have recognized that the statutory principles under Section 50 govern the estate of Parsi Zoroastrians with strict equality within statutory tiers.
  • Jamshedji Cursetjee v. Soonabai (Bombay High Court Rulings): Affirmed that the statutory abolition of feudal English real-property distinctions under Section 50 ensures equal division of all assets among qualifying Parsi heirs.
Courtroom Practice & Strategic Litigation Guidance:

When computing Parsi inheritance shares, any child in utero at the date of the intestate's demise must be allocated a full statutory share in the preliminary partition scheme; if born alive, the share vests conclusively from the date of death.

Section 49 All 391 Sections of Indian Succession Act Section 51