Inheritance rights of step sons as per the Indian legal provisions

As per the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, neither ‘son’ nor ‘step-son’ has been defined; therefore the room for expressions have always been open to judicial interpretation. The expression ‘son’ has also been used in the list of Class I heirs, but here again, the phrase ‘stepson’ has not been specifically included. To begin with, it is generally accepted that the expression “son” undoubtedly includes natural, adopted and even illegitimate sons, though the rules governing succession of each to the shared or self-acquired property of the father would be quite different.

For example, a child born out of a void marriage, though in fact illegitimate, by a legal fiction (under Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955) is considered to be the legitimate son of his father. Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Revanasiddappa v. Mallikarjun (2023), this legal fiction is no longer confined to the self-acquired property of the father: such a child is entitled to a share in the parent’s portion of Hindu joint family or ancestral property, computed as if a notional partition had taken place. The right operates against the share of the parent and does not extend to the separate shares of other coparceners. In any event, such a child would be considered a “son” under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956.

The question of whether the expression “son” in Section 15(1)(a) includes a “stepson” was considered in detail in Lachman Singh v. Kirpa Singh (AIR 1987 SC 1616). The Court held that, under the Act, a son of a woman by her first marriage does not succeed to the estate of her second husband when that husband dies intestate. The decision draws a clear distinction between a son born of the woman and a stepson.

Under Hindu law as it stood before the Act came into force, a stepson — that is, a son of the woman’s husband by another wife — did not automatically succeed to the stridhana of the woman when she died intestate. In such cases, a son born of the woman would have clear priority over a stepson. The Court therefore held that Parliament would have made express provision in the Act had it intended such a radical departure from the earlier position.

A stepson might in this way just have the capacity to stake a case under the classification of ‘beneficiaries of the spouse’ alluded to in statement (b) of Section 15(1).

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