Parents can cancel gift or settlement deeds if children fail to take care of them, even in the absence of an explicit condition: Madras HC

Madras High Court allows senior citizens to cancel gift deeds without explicit care condition, interpreting law liberally.

Senior citizens are entitled to cancel the gift/settlement deeds executed in favour of their children even if there is no explicit condition imposed under such deeds requiring the beneficiaries to take care of their aged parents, the Madras High Court has held.

A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar held that it would be sufficient if such a condition was found to be implicit in the gift/settlement deeds and there appeared to be a natural expectation of being taken care by the children.

Though Section 23(1) of the Maintenance of the Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 expects such a condition to have been imposed in the gift/settlement deeds, courts must interpret the legal provision liberally in order to fulfill the intent behind the legislation, the Bench said.

Authoring the verdict, Justice Subramaniam said, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a highly celebrated former Supreme Court judge, had advised judges to “recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him”

Therefore, while interpreting the provisions of a beneficial legislation, the courts must give a wider meaning to them than choosing to give a restrictive meaning. “The duty of a judge is to interpret a statute in a way that suppresses the mischief it seeks to prevent and promotes the intended remedy,” he added.

Pointing out that the objective of the 2007 Act was to ensure a dignified life to the aged and the weak, the Division Bench said, the requirement under Section 23(1) need not necessarily be explicit and that it should be allowed to be implicit too based on the relationship between the parents and their children.

The judges pointed out that in the present case, an 87-year-old woman S. Nagalakshmi (since dead) of Nagapattinam district had executed a settlement deed in favour of her son S. Kesavan (also dead) alone though she had four daughters who too were entitled to equal share in the property.