In Brief
Muthusamy Gounder died intestate in 1982. His widow (Respondent No. 4) and two other women (Appellant No. 2 and Respondent No. 2, whose marriages to him were unproven) each had children. When a partition suit arose, the courts rejected the claims of the two unproven wives' children because the marriages were not legally established. The Supreme Court held that a registered mortgage deed, in which Muthusamy Gounder explicitly described the two women's children as his sons, constituted a binding admission under the Evidence Act. Despite the marriages' invalidity, the children qualified for equal shares in the notional partition of Muthusamy Gounder's estate as legitimated children of the deceased parent, in accordance with the Hindu Succession and Hindu Marriage Acts.
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