Property Without A Spouse: Can Live-In Partners Inherit through Constructive Trust or Estoppel instead of Succession Law?

*Sanskar Chandak

When a long-term live-in relationship ends in separation, Indian law offers the surviving partner a measure of protection through maintenance and other statutory remedies. When the same relationship ends in death, however, the law takes a markedly different approach. In particular, this raises an important question: does a long-term live-in relationship, in the absence of marriage, confer any entitlement to a deceased partner's estate?

When a long-term live-in relationship ends in death rather than separation, the law under Indian succession has a one-word answer for the surviving partner: nothing. Under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the property of a Hindu male dying intestate devolves upon his Class I heirs, including his "widow." § 8 read with Schedule I, Class I. Likewise,  Section 33 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 recognises the succession rights of a surviving "wife" or "husband". Neither statute recognises a partner who might have spent twenty years building a home, a living, a business, or a bank balance with someone they never married. This represents a significant inconsistency in Indian family law: a partner who may seek maintenance under the Domestic Violence Act during the subsistence of the relationship becomes a legal stranger to the property the moment the relationship ends in death.

Despite recommendations by the Justice V.S. Malimath Committee and the National Commission for Women to extend certain legal protections to women in live-in relationships, Parliament has not enacted a comprehensive statute conferring spousal or succession rights on live-in partners. Consequently, the legal status of such relationships continues to be shaped primarily through judicial decisions rather than legislative reform. This article examines whether the courts can protect the surviving partner using the already established means such as constructive trust, resulting trust, and estoppel, without tweaking the succession law at all. The qualified answer is yes.

The Maintenance-Inheritance Gap

In D. Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, (2010) ¶¶ 33–34, the Court adopted the American concept of “palimony” developed in Marvin v. Marvin, where an unmarried partner was successful in arguing that if there’s an implied understanding that the couple is going to share their property and when the relationship ended, either partner could still claim their right to the property. The Court also laid down a strict four-part test for when a live-in relationship can be considered as one “in the nature of marriage” if (i) the couple holds themselves out to society as being akin to spouses; (ii) they are of legal age to marry; (iii) they are otherwise legally qualified to enter into a marriage, including being unmarried; and (iv) they have voluntarily cohabited and presented themselves as spouses for a significant period. Relationships that are casual, temporary, or entered into merely for sexual purposes would not satisfy this test.

The decision in Indra Sarma v. V.K.V. Sarma, (2013) adopted a stricter approach by denying women the legal protections available to live-in partners. The Court's reasoning was based on the fact that the woman had knowingly entered into a relationship with a man who was already married to another woman.

Although these judgments recognise a long-term live-in partner as being "in the nature of a spouse" for the limited purposes of maintenance and relief under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, they are silent on succession rights. Neither judgment addresses the inheritance of a deceased partner's estate. Consequently, while the law protects a live-in partner during the partner's lifetime, such recognition does not extend to intestate succession, leaving the surviving partner without any statutory right to inherit. However, this apparent inconsistency is largely explained by the distinct purposes of the statutes involved. Each statute was enacted for its unique purpose, and no marriage-type relationship exists with respect to property inheritance; therefore, the surviving partner has been left with nothing.

Constructive Trust: A Doctrine India Quietly Deleted

One of the most effective ways to address this problem is through the doctrine of constructive trust. Developed by English and American courts, the doctrine enables courts to grant a beneficial interest to a person who has contributed to property even if their name does not appear on the title documents. In England, Stack v. Dowden and Jones v. Kernott allow courts to infer or even impute a common intention to share beneficial ownership from the “whole course of dealing” between cohabitants, moving well beyond a narrow tally of who paid what.

India appears, on first glance, to have a ready-made equivalent. The Indian Trusts Act, 1882, § 94 (since repealed) contained a general residuary provision, Section 94 required a person holding property without the entire beneficial interest to hold it for the benefit of the person truly entitled to that interest. In effect, it functioned as a broad, catch-all constructive trust provision.

Except that the provision was repealed, along with Sections 81 and 82, by the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, passed to stop people from using “trust” like reasoning to hide the true ownership of benami property from tax authorities and creditors. The repeal targeted a real problem- the sections had been used to legitimise opaque, fraud-enabling property arrangements but its collateral consequence was that India lost its only general statutory hook for a court to declare a constructive trust in situations the legislature had not anticipated, including a live-in partner’s claim. What survives in the Trusts Act today is a set of narrow, specifically enumerated obligations “in the nature of trust” under Sections 80 to 93 The Indian Trusts Act, 1882, covering situations like fraud, mistake, and breach of confidence, none drafted with cohabitation in mind. Indian courts have been left to improvise around the gap using fragments of the Evidence Act and general equitable reasoning, rather than the confident, accretive doctrine English courts now apply in Stack and Jones.

Resulting Trusts and the Limits of “Contribution”

A resulting trust is the older, narrower cousin of the constructive trust. It arises where one person pays for property registered in another's name. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, equity presumes that the paying party has a beneficial interest in the property in proportion to their contribution. This doctrine survived the 1988 repeal in a different form. Indian courts continue to recognise that a person who contributes to the purchase of property held in another’s name may have an equitable claim, and  D.Velusamy v. D. Patchaiammal, (2010) also points in this direction, noting that a live-in partner may acquire rights to property accumulated during the relationship where she can show a contribution to its acquisition.

The difficulty, however, is that Indian resulting trust jurisprudence has traditionally recognised only direct and traceable financial contributions towards the acquisition of property. It does not ordinarily account for non-financial contributions, such as unpaid domestic labour, childcare, or career sacrifices, which English courts consider as part of the parties' "whole course of dealing." Consequently, a live-in partner who has contributed primarily through domestic or caregiving responsibilities is unlikely to establish a beneficial interest in the property, despite such contributions often giving rise to the greatest hardship when inheritance is denied.

Estoppel - A Shield, not a Sword

If contribution-based trusts have a narrow window, what about estoppel, the principle that someone who relied to their detriment on a partner’s assurance of the future ownership should not be allowed to have that assurance withdrawn? In English law, this is known as proprietary estoppel and treats it as capable of generating an independent cause of action; a claimant can sue to enforce the promised interest in land, not merely defend against someone else’s claim.

Indian law has not taken the same step. Promissory and equitable estoppel in India, rooted in The Indian Evidence Act, 1872, § 115; Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, § 121 and developed through cases like Motilal Padampat Sugar Mills Co. Ltd. v. State of U.P., (1979) , has been applied almost exclusively against government bodies reneging on policy promises. The Indian judiciary has repeatedly emphasised that promissory estoppel can be used as a shield - it prevents a person from denying a promise that they have made, but not as a sword capable of creating an independent legal right. A handful of Indian judgments invoke “proprietary estoppel” in family-property disputes, borrowing English language about detriment and unconscionability, but the doctrine has no settled, independent existence in Indian property law comparable to its English counterpart. A partner relying on estoppel alone, without an underlying contribution-based trust claim, would be relying on the weakest and least tested of the three equitable tools available.

What a Revived Doctrine Would Need

None of this means that a new principle cannot be established, Indian courts have more of the requisite raw material than is commonly assumed, but haven’t yet transformed it into a coherent doctrine. The Delhi High Court's recent willingness, in Gurvinder Singh v. Government of NCT of Delhi, to treat reproductive material as constituting "property" capable of devolving as part of an estate reflects a judicial willingness to recognise non-traditional property interests without waiting for Parliament to legislate a specific category. That same willingness could turn toward a live-in partner’s claim, particularly if paired with the residuary obligations remaining in Sections 80 to 93 of the Trusts Act and a Stack-style “whole course of dealing” test imported as persuasive comparative authority.

The 1988 repeal of Section 94 cuts both ways. It was surely a genuine loss, but it also reminds us of the fact that nothing in Indian law prevents the court from recognising a constructive trust through judicial reasoning alone, as English courts do so through case law rather than relying upon statutes. Reviving Section 94, or its functional equivalent through accretive case law, would do for live-in partners’ property claims what the Domestic Violence Act already did for their maintenance claims, recognising, without rewriting marriage law itself, that a relationship can generate enforceable obligations.

Conclusion

Succession law reform in India is likely to take time since it touches every personal law at once; however, equity, by contrast, is capable of judicial development. A surviving live-in partner does not need Parliament to amend the Hindu Succession Act before a court can ask whether the deceased’s house was, in substance, if not in form, held for both partners’ benefit. The Indian judiciary has recognised various rights of live-in partners, and when the question arises about the inheritance rights of the live-in partners, the judiciary is not short of legal tools; however, what is absent is the willingness to formulate it as a comprehensive doctrine, as the English courts have done.

*The Author is a third- year law student pursuing B.A. LL.B. at Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai.

The views expressed above are the author's alone and do not represent the beliefs of Family Law Chronicle: The CFL Blog.