Before the Indian Succession Act, 1925 can tell you who inherits, it must first tell you how closely a claimant is related to the dead. That arithmetic of blood is the work of Part IV of the Act, captioned "Of Consanguinity," comprising Sections 24 to 28. These five sections do not themselves distribute a single rupee. Instead they supply the grammar of relationship-defining kindred, splitting it into lineal and collateral consanguinity, fixing the rule that every generation is a degree, and prescribing how those degrees are counted-which the distributive provisions of Part V (Sections 29 to 49 for Christians and Sections 50 to 56 for Parsis) then deploy to apportion the estate. Master this chapter and the seemingly forbidding tables of Christian and Parsi intestacy reduce to a counting exercise. This article grounds every proposition in the bare text verified against indiacode.nic.in and explains the doctrine through the courts that have applied it.
Where Part IV Sits in the Scheme of the Act
The Indian Succession Act, 1925 is a consolidating statute, and its architecture matters as much as its rules. Part IV-"Of Consanguinity"-is a short, purely definitional Part. It does not confer a right to property; it merely lends a vocabulary that Part V ("Intestate Succession") borrows when it actually devolves an estate. To use the chapter intelligently you must first place it against the Act's domain limits, which we treat fully in our note on the introduction, scheme and application of the Act.
Section 23 fixes the reach of this Part. It declares that nothing in Part IV applies to any will made or intestacy occurring before 1 January 1866, or to intestate or testamentary succession to the property of any Hindu, Muhammadan, Buddhist, Sikh, Jaina or Parsi. The exclusion of Parsis from Part IV is the trap that catches the unwary student: although Parsis are governed by the Act for intestacy, their succession (Sections 50 to 56) has its own self-contained scheme and does not import the consanguinity definitions of Sections 24 to 28. Practically, then, Part IV is the engine of Christian intestate succession-the kindred whose shares Sections 41 to 49 compute are the kindred defined here. The wider devolution rules are taken up in our notes on intestate succession: general rules and on intestate succession of Christians and Parsis.
Kindred or Consanguinity: Section 24
Section 24 opens the chapter with a definition of disarming simplicity: "Kindred or consanguinity is the connection or relation of persons descended from the same stock or common ancestor." Three ideas are packed into that single line. First, "kindred" and "consanguinity" are treated as synonyms-relationship by blood, not by marriage. A spouse is therefore not kindred; the husband or wife inherits as a separate, statutorily created class, never as part of the blood-line. We examine that separate spousal entitlement, and how marriage reshapes property rights, in our note on marriage and its effect on the property of husband and wife.
Second, consanguinity requires descent from a "common ancestor." Persons connected only through marriage-affines such as a son-in-law or a sister-in-law-fall outside Section 24 altogether and cannot take as kindred. Third, the phrase "same stock" anticipates the later split between lineal and collateral lines: two persons may share a common stock either because one descends from the other (lineal) or because both descend from a third person without either descending from the other (collateral). For a fuller treatment of the foundational vocabulary the Act repeatedly invokes-"will," "administrator," "minor," "per stirpes"-see our note on the Act's definitions and key concepts.
Lineal Consanguinity and the Doctrine of Degrees: Section 25
Section 25 defines the first of the two species of kindred. Sub-section (1) provides that "lineal consanguinity is that which subsists between two persons, one of whom is descended in a direct line from the other, as between a man and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and so upwards in the direct ascending line, or between a man and his son, grandson, great-grandson and so downwards in direct descending line." The defining feature is direct descent: an unbroken vertical line, upward to ancestors or downward to descendants.
Sub-section (2) supplies the unit of measurement-"Every generation constitutes a degree, either ascending or descending"-and sub-section (3) works it out: "A person's father is related to him in the first degree, and so likewise is his son; his grandfather and grandson in the second degree; his great-grandfather and great-grandson in the third degree, and so on." The elegance here is symmetry. The degree counts the number of generational steps between the two persons, and it is identical whether you climb or descend. Father and son are each one degree from the propositus; grandfather and grandson each two; great-grandfather and great-grandson each three. This concept of the "lineal descendant"-anyone in the direct descending line, however remote-is the very class that Section 32 places first in the queue of Christian heirs, and whose preferential entitlement Sections 33 to 40 then articulate. Lineal descent thus is not a mere abstraction; it is the spine of the entire Christian intestacy scheme.
Collateral Consanguinity: Section 26 and Reckoning Through the Common Stock
Section 26(1) defines the second species: "Collateral consanguinity is that which subsists between two persons who are descended from the same stock or ancestor, but neither of whom is descended in a direct line from the other." Brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins-all are collaterals, because although they share a common ancestor with the propositus, neither stands in the direct ascending or descending line.
The genuinely operative provision is Section 26(2), which prescribes how a collateral's degree is fixed: "For the purpose of ascertaining in what degree of kindred any collateral relative stands to a person deceased, it is necessary to reckon upwards from the person deceased to the common stock and then downwards to the collateral relative, a degree being allowed for each person, both ascending and descending." This is the V-shaped count that distinguishes collateral from lineal reckoning. To find the degree of a brother, you ascend one step to the common stock (the father) and descend one step to the brother-two persons counted, so a brother is in the second degree, the same degree as a grandfather. An uncle: ascend two (father, grandfather) and descend one (uncle)-third degree. A first cousin: ascend two and descend two-fourth degree. Note the counter-intuitive result that a brother and a grandfather sit in the same degree; this is why the Act, when it actually distributes, does not rely on degree alone but specifies named classes in Sections 42 to 48. Section 26 supplies the measuring tape; the distributive sections decide who in fact takes.
The Great Equalising Rule: Section 27
Section 27 is the doctrinal heart of Part IV and the section examiners love. Titled "Persons held for purpose of succession to be similarly related to deceased," it abolishes three distinctions that older systems of inheritance drew. It provides that "for the purpose of succession, there is no distinction-(a) between those who are related to a person deceased through his father, and those who are related to him through his mother; or (b) between those who are related to a person deceased by the full blood, and those who are related to him by the half blood; or (c) between those who were actually born in the lifetime of a person deceased, and those who at the date of his death were only conceived in the womb, but who have been subsequently born alive."
Clause (a) eliminates the paternal-maternal distinction: a maternal uncle and a paternal uncle stand on identical footing, a sharp departure from systems that prefer the agnatic line. Clause (b) is the famous half-blood equality rule. The half blood-relatives sharing only one common parent-takes equally with the whole blood under this Act, in deliberate contrast to the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, whose Section 18 prefers whole-blood heirs over half-blood heirs where the relationship is otherwise the same. A student who confuses the two regimes loses a guaranteed mark. Clause (c) embodies the venerable maxim nasciturus pro iam nato habetur-the child in the womb is treated as already born-so that a posthumous child, conceived before but born alive after the intestate's death, inherits as though living at death. The condition is strict: the child must be "subsequently born alive."
Computing Degrees of Kindred: Section 28 and Schedule I
Section 28 closes the chapter by tying the abstract degree-counting of Sections 25 and 26 to a concrete instrument: "Degrees of kindred are computed in the manner set forth in the table of kindred set out in Schedule I." Schedule I-the Table of Kindred-radiates outward from the propositus, placing father and son in the first degree, grandparents, grandchildren and brothers in the second, and so on through the lattice of uncles, nephews, cousins and grand-uncles. The Table is not decorative; Section 28 makes it the legally authoritative method of computation.
The three illustrations to Section 28 work the Table for the student. Illustration (i): "The person whose relatives are to be reckoned, and his cousin-german, or first cousin, are... related in the fourth degree; there being one degree of ascent to the father, and another to the common ancestor, the grandfather; and from him one of descent to the uncle, and another to the cousin-german, making in all four degrees." Illustration (ii) shows that a great-nephew (grandson of the brother) and a first cousin (son of the uncle) are in equal degree, each being four degrees removed. Illustration (iii): a grandson of a first cousin and the grandson of a great-uncle are both in the sixth degree of kindred. These illustrations are the surest test of whether a candidate has internalised the upward-then-downward count of Section 26(2). Practise them until the answers are reflexive.
Lineal Versus Collateral: Why the Distinction Decides the Estate
The pivot of Christian intestate succession is the binary of lineal descendant versus collateral kindred. Section 32 declares that the property of an intestate Christian devolves upon the spouse, or upon those who are of the kindred of the deceased, in the order set out in the Chapter. Within that order, lineal descendants enjoy absolute priority: so long as a single lineal descendant survives, the collateral kindred are wholly excluded from the residue that the lineal descendants take. Only when there is no lineal descendant do Sections 41 to 48 open the gate to father, mother, brothers, sisters and remoter collaterals.
This is why Section 25's definition of lineal consanguinity is load-bearing. A grandchild whose parent predeceased the intestate is still a lineal descendant in the second degree and takes per stirpes (by the stock) under the representational rules of Sections 33 to 40, displacing every collateral. The consanguinity definitions, in other words, decide not merely the size of a share but whether an entire branch of the family inherits at all. The detailed arithmetic of these competing claims is the subject of our companion note on intestate succession of Christians and Parsis.
Half Blood Under This Act Contrasted With Hindu Law
The half-blood rule in Section 27(b) repays close study because it diverges so cleanly from the parallel Hindu provision. Under the Indian Succession Act, a uterine or consanguine sibling-sharing only one parent with the intestate-inherits on exactly the same terms as a full-blood sibling. There is no preference, no postponement: "there is no distinction... between those who are related... by the full blood, and those... by the half blood."
Compare Section 18 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956: "Heirs related to an intestate by full blood shall be preferred to heirs related by half blood, if the nature of the relationship is the same in every other respect." The contrast is stark and frequently examined. Under Hindu law a full-blood brother excludes a half-blood brother; under the Indian Succession Act they take together. The rationale lies in the Act's general philosophy, inherited from English common law, of treating blood relationship as a matter of degree and line rather than of the purity of the shared parentage. For Christians, then, the family is counted by generations and lines, with paternal and maternal, full and half, all flattened into equality by Section 27.
The Child En Ventre Sa Mere: Section 27(c) in Action
Section 27(c) deserves a section of its own because it converts a maxim of equity into a hard rule of property. A child en ventre sa mere-in its mother's womb-at the moment of the intestate's death is deemed to have been born before that death, provided it is afterwards born alive. The legal personality of the child is, as the Latin tag puts it, suspended: the law watches and waits, and if a living child emerges, the law retrospectively treats it as having existed at the crucial moment.
The practical consequence is significant. Suppose a Christian intestate dies leaving a widow who is pregnant. If the child is later born alive, it ranks as a lineal descendant from the date of death and takes its full share under Sections 33 to 37, potentially reducing the collateral kindred to nothing. The two conditions are cumulative and strict: the child must have been (i) conceived before the death, and (ii) subsequently born alive. A child conceived after death, or one stillborn, takes nothing. This rule harmonises with the general principle, applied across the Act, that succession crystallises at the instant of death but admits the unborn-but-conceived into the class of those then living.
Kindred and the Problem of Illegitimacy
A recurring controversy is whether "kindred" in Sections 24 to 27 embraces children born outside lawful wedlock. The orthodox common-law position, which the Indian Succession Act inherited, was that consanguinity for succession meant lawful blood relationship: an illegitimate child was traditionally filius nullius, the child of no one, and so outside the kindred. The Act contains no general clause admitting illegitimate children to Christian intestate succession, in contrast to Section 21 of the Indian Divorce Act, 1869, which legitimates only the issue of certain void marriages.
The Kerala High Court confronted the human cost of this rule in Jane Antony v. V.M. Siyath, 2008 (4) KLT 1002. Children born of a relationship where the deceased Antony and their mother had lived as man and wife sought to succeed; the orthodox reading would have excluded them as not being "kindred." The Court, surveying the constitutional value of equality and the changing understanding of legitimacy, recognised the right of such children to succeed to the estate of the parent, treating them as entitled rather than as strangers to the blood. The decision exemplifies the modern judicial pressure on the inherited definition of consanguinity and is a favourite illustration of how Sections 24 to 27, though framed in neutral language, were historically read through a lens of legitimacy that courts have begun to soften.
Consanguinity, Domicile and the Reach of the Rules
The consanguinity rules of Part IV do not operate in a vacuum; their application to any given estate depends on the deceased's domicile and the nature of the property. Section 5 of the Act draws the familiar private-international-law line: succession to the immovable property of a person in India is regulated by the law of India wherever he was domiciled, while succession to his movable property is regulated by the law of the country in which he was domiciled at death. The degree-counting of Sections 25 to 28 therefore governs movables only where the intestate died domiciled in India.
This makes domicile a threshold question before the Table of Kindred is ever consulted, a point we develop in our dedicated note on domicile under the Act. For a Christian dying domiciled in India, leaving immovable property here, Part IV's definitions and Part V's distribution apply in full; for movables of a foreign-domiciled Christian, the lex domicilii may displace them entirely. The consanguinity chapter is thus the second question, not the first: domicile and the movable-immovable divide come ahead of it.
Why Mary Roy Matters for the Consanguinity Scheme
No discussion of Christian intestacy-and hence of the kindred whom Part IV defines-is complete without Mrs. Mary Roy v. State of Kerala, AIR 1986 SC 1011 (also reported as 1986 SCR (1) 371 and (1986) 2 SCC 209), decided on 24 February 1986 by a Bench of Bhagwati and Pathak JJ. Before Mary Roy, Christians in the former princely State of Travancore were governed for intestacy by the Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1092, under which a daughter took only a fraction of a son's share and widows and mothers took mere life interests.
The Supreme Court held that on the coming into force of Part B States (Laws) Act, 1951, the Indian Succession Act, 1925 displaced the Travancore Act, so that intestate succession among Travancore Christians thereafter fell to be governed by the 1925 Act. The consequence for our chapter is direct: the kindred defined by Sections 24 to 28, and distributed among under Sections 29 to 49 with their gender-neutral, full-and-half-blood-equal, paternal-and-maternal-equal philosophy, became the governing law for a community previously subject to a discriminatory regime. Mary Roy is therefore the case that gave the consanguinity scheme its present reach over Indian Christians, and it is examined alongside the wider devolution rules in our note on intestate succession of Christians and Parsis.
The Parsi Exclusion and Its Significance
It bears repeating, because the point is so frequently mis-stated, that Sections 24 to 28 do not govern Parsi intestate succession. Section 23 expressly excludes Parsis from Part IV, and the Parsi-specific provisions-Sections 50 to 56, substantially recast by the Indian Succession (Amendment) Act, 1991-contain their own definitions and their own scheme of relatives, set out in Schedule II to the Act. A Parsi's intestate estate is distributed among the relatives named in that Schedule in the manner Sections 51 to 54 prescribe, not by reference to the degree-counting of Sections 25 and 26.
The reason is historical: Parsi succession evolved from custom codified separately, and the 1925 Act preserved that distinct scheme rather than folding it into the common consanguinity chapter. For the examinee the practical rule is clean-if the intestate is a Christian, Part IV (Sections 24 to 28) supplies the relationship grammar; if the intestate is a Parsi, ignore Part IV entirely and turn to Sections 50 to 56 and Schedule II. This bright-line distinction is one of the most reliable ways an examiner separates candidates who have read the Act from those who have only read about it. The full Parsi scheme is set out in our note on intestate succession of Christians and Parsis.
Putting It Together: An Exam-Grade Method
To answer any problem on Sections 24 to 28 reliably, proceed in a fixed order. First, confirm the intestate is a Christian-if a Parsi, Part IV does not apply (Section 23). Second, settle domicile and the movable-immovable divide under Section 5, because Part IV governs only where Indian law applies. Third, classify each claimant as lineal or collateral: ask whether the claimant descends in a direct line from, or is a direct ancestor of, the intestate (Section 25) or merely shares a common stock (Section 26). Fourth, compute the degree-straight count of generations for lineals (Section 25(2)-(3)); upward-to-common-stock-then-downward for collaterals (Section 26(2)), cross-checked against Schedule I as Section 28 requires.
Fifth, apply the three equalisers of Section 27: ignore the paternal-maternal line, treat half blood as full blood, and admit any child conceived before but born alive after the death. Sixth-and only now-turn to the distributive provisions of Part V to convert the relationship into an actual share, remembering that lineal descendants exclude collaterals (Section 32 onwards). Anchor the answer in the bright contrasts examiners reward: half-blood equality here versus half-blood postponement under Section 18 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956; paternal-maternal equality here versus agnatic preference elsewhere; the Parsi exclusion under Section 23. For the surrounding framework, keep our notes on intestate succession: general rules and the Act's definitions and key concepts at hand, and return to the Indian Succession Act hub for the full series.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between lineal and collateral consanguinity under the Indian Succession Act?
Lineal consanguinity (Section 25) subsists where one person is descended in a direct line from the other-father, son, grandfather, grandson and so on up or down the vertical line. Collateral consanguinity (Section 26) subsists where two persons share a common stock or ancestor but neither descends directly from the other-brothers, uncles, nephews and cousins. The distinction is decisive: lineal descendants of a Christian intestate exclude collateral kindred from the residue under Section 32 onwards.
How are degrees of kindred computed under Sections 25, 26 and 28?
For lineals, Section 25 counts one degree per generation-father and son are in the first degree, grandfather and grandson in the second, and so on. For collaterals, Section 26(2) requires reckoning upward from the deceased to the common stock and then downward to the relative, allowing a degree for each person both ascending and descending. Section 28 makes the Table of Kindred in Schedule I the authoritative instrument; its illustrations show, for example, that a first cousin is in the fourth degree.
Does the half blood inherit equally with the whole blood under the Indian Succession Act?
Yes. Section 27(b) provides that for the purpose of succession there is no distinction between those related to the deceased by the full blood and those related by the half blood. This is the opposite of Hindu law: Section 18 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 prefers full-blood heirs over half-blood heirs where the relationship is otherwise the same. The contrast is a frequent examination point.
Can a child in the womb inherit under the Indian Succession Act?
Yes, subject to two strict conditions. Section 27(c) provides that there is no distinction between those born in the lifetime of the deceased and those who at the date of death were only conceived in the womb but were subsequently born alive. The child must have been conceived before the death and must be born alive afterwards. This embodies the maxim nasciturus pro iam nato habetur-the unborn but conceived child is treated as already born.
Do Sections 24 to 28 apply to Parsi intestate succession?
No. Section 23 expressly excludes Parsis (along with Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains) from Part IV. Parsi intestate succession is governed by its own self-contained scheme in Sections 50 to 56, read with Schedule II to the Act. The consanguinity definitions of Sections 24 to 28 therefore operate principally as the relationship grammar of Christian intestate succession.
How did Mary Roy v. State of Kerala affect the consanguinity scheme?
In Mrs. Mary Roy v. State of Kerala, AIR 1986 SC 1011, the Supreme Court held that the Indian Succession Act, 1925 governs intestate succession among Christians in the former Travancore region, displacing the discriminatory Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1092. The effect was that the gender-neutral, full-and-half-blood-equal kindred scheme defined in Sections 24 to 28 and distributed under Sections 29 to 49 became the governing law for that community.