Recall drill
Six questions on the parts that cost money if you get them wrong. Answer in your head first, then open.
Which Act governs an HUF's tax position for income earned today, and which section now carries the clubbing rule?
The Income-tax Act, 2025, in force from 1 April 2026, which repealed the 1961 Act. Clubbing sits at Section 99 (it was s.64 in the old Act). Returns for FY 2025-26 were still filed under the old Act — the two overlap for one filing cycle.
Your father dies intestate and you inherit ₹20 lakh from him. You put it into your HUF. Whose income is the interest?
Yours, individually. Under CWT v. Chander Sen, property inherited from a father under s.8 of the Hindu Succession Act is the heir's individual property, not HUF property. Moving it into the HUF is a voluntary conversion by a member, so clubbing applies. The clean routes are true ancestral coparcenary property, or a will that named the HUF as legatee.
Is your married daughter still a coparcener in your HUF?
Yes. Section 6 HSA as substituted in 2005 makes a daughter a coparcener by birth, and Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma (2020) confirmed this applies whether she was born before or after the amendment and whether or not her father was alive on 9 September 2005. Marriage does not end it. She also becomes a member of her husband's HUF — but not a coparcener there.
On your death, does your share of the HUF pass to the surviving coparceners by survivorship?
No. Section 6(3) HSA: a deceased coparcener's interest devolves by testamentary or intestate succession, not survivorship. A notional partition fixes the size of your share; your widow, mother and all your children then take from it as Class I heirs. The HUF itself does not dissolve.
Can you settle one son's claim by giving him his share and leaving the rest of the HUF intact?
Under Hindu law yes; for tax, no. Section 171(9) of the old Act — carried into the 2025 Act — deems every partial partition after 31 December 1978 invalid. The department keeps assessing the whole thing as an undivided HUF and every member stays jointly and severally liable. Only a total partition by metes and bounds, recognised by an order of the Assessing Officer, gives clean closure.
Can the Karta sell HUF immovable property because he thinks it's a good price?
Not on that ground alone. Alienation of joint family property is valid only for legal necessity, benefit of the estate, or indispensable religious obligation. A sale outside those three heads can be challenged by any coparcener — including years later, by one who was a minor at the time.
This workbench assembles a draft from what you type. It is not legal advice and it has not seen your family's actual documents. Corpus sourcing, stamp duty, registrability and succession all turn on facts a form cannot capture. Have a chartered accountant review the corpus clause and an advocate review the whole instrument before anyone signs.