Report No. 66

5.2. Section 20, Indian Succession Act, 1925.-

Of these provisions, the most important is contained in section 20 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 which replaced section 4 of the Indian Succession Act, 1865. It may be noted that this section really does not affect the law of succession, but relates to the immediate effect of marriage on property belonging to either of the married persons.1 Where the restraint on alienation is created by a settlement on the occasion of marriage, this section has no application.2

The section reads:

"20.(1) No person shall, by marriage, acquire any interest in the property of the person whom he or she marries or become incapable of doing any act in respect of his or her own property which he or she could have done it unmarried.

(2) This section-

(a) shall not apply to any marriage contracted before the first day of January 1866;

(b) shall not apply, and shall be deemed never to have applied, to any marriage one or both of the parties to which professed at the time of the marriage the Hindu, Muhammadan, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain religion."

1. Hill v. Administrator General of Bengal, 1896 ILR 23 Cal 506.

2. Peters v. Manuk, 22 WR 175 (Cal.).