11/05/2025
وراثت کے ہر دعوے میں لیمٹیشن ، waiver یا دستبرداری اور acquiescence چشم پوشی جیسے سوالات کو نظر انداز نہیں کیا جا سکتا۔
ایک واضح فرق کرنا ضروری ہے کہ وراثت کا دعویٰ قانونی وارث کی زندگی میں کیا گیا ہو یا اس کی وفات کے بعد۔
The questions of limitation, waiver and acquiescence cannot be brushed aside in every claim of inheritance.
The distinction has to be drawn between a claim of inheritance agitated during the lifetime of the legal heir(s) and the one agitated after death of such legal heir(s).
The law has been well settled that if a predecessor has not challenged a transaction in his/her lifetime, which transaction purports to deprive the predecessor of his/her share and 3rd party rights have been created, simple claim on the basis of inheritance will not absolve the question of limitation. A careful perusal of the law laid down by the Apex Court clearly leads to an ineluctable conclusion that the question of limitation cannot be dubbed irrelevant in every claim of inheritance. Based on a thorough analysis of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the settled legal position emerges that only in the cases of exceptional facts, the question of limitation has not been treated as a statutory bar against the claims of inheritance. Those exceptional cases may be summed up in the following terms:
i. Cases filed by female heirs, within their lifetime, claiming fraud and misrepresentation played against them qua the immoveable property left behind by their predecessor in interest;
ii. Cases where it is pleaded and proved that the deprived female heir(s) were being paid some proportionate share from the income/lease of the immoveable property in question;
iii. Cases where a co-sharer has successfully pleaded and proved that the rival heir or co-sharer was in deemed possession of immoveable property on behalf of all other heirs/siblings;
iv. Cases where no third-party rights have been created in the immoveable property, which is/was subject matter of undisputed inheritance;
v. Cases where the elements of acquiescence and waiver are absent on the part of the claimant legal heir or his/her predecessor in interest.
WP 10459/19
Muhammad Hafeez Vs Muhammad Ramzan etc
Mr. Justice Khalid Ishaq
2025 LHC 2832
Announced and dictated on 23.04.2025.
Signed on 09.05.2024.
