Section 87 Succession Act: Testator's intention to be effectuated as far as possible

Section 87 of Indian Succession Act: Testamentary & Estate Administration Procedure

Official Bare Act Text

Override / Mandate Mens Rea (Intent) Actus Reus (Conduct) Punishment Limitation Monetary

The intention of the testator shall not be set aside because it cannot take effect to the full extent, but effect is to be given to it as far as possible.

Illustration

A testator by his will leaves property to A for life, and after his decease to B for life, and after his decease to a certain hospital. The hospital cannot take under the will because the conditions required by section 118 have not been fulfilled. The intention to benefit A and B will take effect.

Legal Commentary & Landmark Judgments: Section 87

Section 87 empowers the court to give effect to the testator's intention even if some words have been omitted, provided the intention is clear from the instrument as a whole.

Core Legal Standard: Section 87 provides a statutory mandate to prioritize substance over defective syntax.
Operational Mechanism: Testators frequently suffer from grammatical lapses, omissions of connectives, or incomplete grammatical predicates.

Section 87 enacts that the testator's intention shall not be defeated merely because some words necessary to complete the grammatical syntax have been omitted, provided the court can discern the underlying purpose from the context.

This provision reinforces the court's equitable mission to save testaments from technical failure. Rather than declaring an ungrammatical or truncated clause void, the court must read between the lines to carry out the manifest testamentary scheme.

Key Landmark Precedents:

Pearey Lal v. Rameshwar Das, AIR 1963 SC 1703: The Supreme Court held that under Section 87, grammatical imperfections and omissions of formal words cannot defeat the clear testamentary intention apparent from the entire instrument.
Gnambal Ammal v. T. Raju Ayyar, AIR 1951 SC 103: The Supreme Court affirmed that courts must look at the substance of the testator's mind under Section 87 rather than punishing syntactic omissions.

Legal Commentary:

Section 87 rescues poorly drafted holographic wills from dismissal. When an adversary claims that a sentence is incomplete or missing an operative verb (e.g., 'to my sister 5 lakhs and house to brother'), Section 87 allows the court to supply the syntactic connective and uphold both gifts.

Section 87: Testator's intention to be effectuated as far as possible

Section 87 of Indian Succession Act: Testamentary & Estate Administration Procedure

Legal Commentary & Landmark Judgments: Section 87