Date:03/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/03/stories/2008100354970500.htm

New Delhi

‘Son has no right to live in self-acquired house of parents’

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has ruled that sons do not have an inherent right to live alone or along with their spouses in the self-acquired houses of their parents.

Dismissing an appeal by a daughter-in-law against the order of an Additional Sessions Judge here restraining her from forcibly entering the house of her in-laws, Justice S. N. Dhingra said: “A son can live in the house of his parents as a matter of right only if the house is an ancestral property in which he has a share and he can enforce partition. Where the house is self-acquired by the parents, he, whether married or unmarried, has no legal right to live there.”

The appellant, Neetu Mittal, had sought setting aside of the judgment by the Sessions Judge restraining her from entering the house of her in-laws, Kanta Mittal and Kishan Mittal, at Ashok Vihar in North-West Delhi.

Earlier, a Civil Judge had allowed Neetu Mittal to stay in her in-laws’ house as a matter of right.

Vikas Mittal, son of the Mittal couple, along with his wife Neetu had separated from his parents under a compromise brokered by the local police and bought a flat in the Capital’s Rohini area to stay but his wife had refused to shift there on flimsy grounds of inoperative coolers and fans.

Thereafter she asserted that she had a right to live in her in-laws’ house. Her assertion had compelled her in-laws to move court urging it to restrain her from entering their house.

Dismissing her plea, Mr. Justice Dhingra said: “A woman has her rights of maintenance against her husband or sons or daughters but she cannot thrust herself against the parents of her husband and nor can claim a right to live in the house of the parents of her husband against their wishes.”