Telangana HC: Adopted child loses right in biological parents' property

 Hyderabad: The full bench of the Telangana High Court made it clear that an adopted child would cease to be the coparcener (a person with equal rights along with others in the inheritance of property) of the family of his or her birth and would forgo interest in their ancestral property.

However, the court said, the adopted child would have the right if the partition had taken place in the birth family before the adoption and property was allotted to their share.

The full bench headed by Justice Ponugoti Naveen Rao, Justice Bollam Vijaysen Reddy and Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka delivered the decision in a petition which was pending before the High Court since 2001.

In 1980, the then High Court of Andhra Pradesh in ‘Yarlagadda Nayudamma vs Government of AP’ declared that a person in Mitakshara family had got a vested right even in the undivided property of the natural family and on adoption continues to have a right over it.

Basing on this judgment, one Narasimha Rao filed a suit against his brother Nageswara Rao and other family members in 1977, for partition and possession of the properties of the undivided family. The senior civil judge court at Khammam declared that a coparcener of the family in which he was born would not be divested of his share in the property belonging to that family after his adoption by another family.

Challenging the order, Nageswara Rao in 1985 filed an appeal before the High Court which dismissed it. The court also dismissed the review petition. He then filed a letter of patent appeal, which came before a division bench of the High Court in 2001.

In view of the orders of the Supreme Court and the Patna High Court and other judgments, the division bench was not persuaded to accept the reasoning assigned in the Nayudamma case. Hence, the court constituted the full bench of Justice Naveen Rao, Justice Vijaysen Reddy and Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka to examine the order.

After going into Mayne’s ‘Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage’ and Sir D.F. Mulla’s ‘Principles of Hindu Law’ and following the decisions of the Supreme Court and the opinions of the Patna and Allahabad high court, the full bench clarified that on adoption, the child ceases to be the coparcener of family of his/her birth and foregoes interest in the ancestral property in the family of his birth.