Under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 and Supreme Court rulings (Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma), what is the legal status of a Daughter in a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF)?

[ A ]A daughter loses all HUF coparcenary rights upon getting married.

[ B ]A daughter can only receive a 10% share compared to sons.

[ C ]Daughters are legally barred from being HUF coparceners.

[ D ]A daughter is a Coparcener by birth in her own right with identical rights and liabilities as a son, entitled to claim partition and act as Karta of the HUF.[ CORRECT ]

Takeaway

Option D is correct: A daughter is a Coparcener by birth in her own right with identical rights and liabilities as a son, entitled to claim partition and act as Karta of the HUF.

Derivation

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 rewrote Section 6 to make a daughter a coparcener 'by birth' in the same manner as a son, and the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma settled that this coparcenary status applies regardless of whether the father-coparcener was alive on the date the amendment took effect. As a full coparcener, a daughter carries the same rights and liabilities as a son: she can demand partition of the HUF property, inherit ancestral assets on an equal footing, and is legally eligible to act as Karta, the managing head of the family, a position historically reserved for the senior-most male member. Marriage has no bearing on this status, since coparcenary rights attach at birth, not through continued residence in the natal family.

Why the others fail

A — A daughter loses all HUF coparcenary rights upon getting married.

The 2005 amendment confers coparcenary status on a daughter by birth, and this status is not extinguished or diminished by her subsequent marriage.

B — A daughter can only receive a 10% share compared to sons.

Daughters inherit an equal, identical coparcenary share alongside sons under the 2005 amendment, not a reduced 10% share relative to male coparceners.

C — Daughters are legally barred from being HUF coparceners.

Barring daughters from coparcenary status was the pre-2005 legal position; the 2005 amendment to Section 6 abolished that bar explicitly.