Intestate succession is the set of statutory rules that determine how a deceased person's property is distributed when they die without a valid Will -- in India, these rules differ by the deceased's religion, governed for Hindus (which for this purpose also includes Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs) by the Hindu Succession Act, and for other communities by their own personal law or the Indian Succession Act.
Under the Hindu Succession Act, a male Hindu dying intestate has his property distributed first among
Class I heirs (including his mother, widow, sons, and daughters, sharing equally, along with certain heirs
of predeceased children), with more distant relatives inheriting only if no Class I heir survives. A female
Hindu dying intestate has a somewhat different order, generally favoring her own children and husband
first. The 2005 amendment to the Act, confirmed in the Vineeta Sharma judgment on this platform's Judgment
Library, also gave daughters an equal coparcenary birthright in ancestral property, which affects how
intestate shares in joint-family property are calculated. Muslim, Christian, and Parsi intestate succession
follow entirely different statutory schemes, so the applicable rules for a specific estate always depend
first on identifying which personal law governs the deceased.
