January 22, 2025

Have the son and his family the right to enter parents’ home irrespective of the way they treat them? The Mumbai High Court has ruled that they do not have unhindered right of access if they ill-treat their parents, including mental and physical abuse or indecent behavior. In the instant case, the mother changed the locks of the main entrance to prevent an abusive son and his family from entering her home. The son preferred an appeal on grounds of dispossession. The court ruled that since the flat was in the mother’s name and since the son and his family mentally and physically ill-treated the widowed mother; they had no right to enter the flat without her permission.

It has become a set narrative that children, especially sons, think that parents’ property is theirs by default. The law does not say so. A parent is free to bequeath his or her earned property to anyone of his or her choice. Normally, if relations are cordial, parents do will their property to their children. But if children do not care for them in old age or abuse them, they cannot expect to benefit from their parents’ largesse. The court was absolutely right in protecting the rights of the mother and ruling that there was no dispossession involved in the case. The son and his family were living in their mother’s home as she allowed it. Her refusal to allow them further rights could not be construed as dispossession under the law as there was no tenant-landlord or lessor-lessee relationship involved.