In Brief
Atma Singh challenged his brother Pal Singh's estate passing to their mother, Gurmej Kaur, after Pal Singh's intestate death in 1972. Gurmej Kaur had remarried after their father's death in 1952. The appellant argued the Hindu Widow's Re-Marriage Act, 1856, barred her inheritance as a widow. The Supreme Court held that while remarriage ends a widow's rights in her deceased husband's property, it does not affect her independent right to inherit her son's estate under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956. A mother cannot be divested of inheritance based on remarriage. The Court dismissed the appeal, affirming the mother's succession as a Class I heir under the 1956 Act."
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