Under the applicable local law, a husband is considered an heir to his father-in-law only if the wife survived the father. Additionally, appellate courts generally defer to lower courts' findings of fact unless they are perverse or based on an obvious error of fact.

Viscount Dunedin. -

The land, the contention as to which is the matter of this suit, belonged originally to one U Laik, who died somewhere about the year 1893. He left the land burdened with a mortgage. U Laik was survived by a large family ; to most of the family there is no reason that any particular reference should be made, but the youngest daughter married U Bauk. That lady died and U Bank married again. The lady had before her death a daughter called Ma Thet Pon, and Ma. Thet Pon is the plaintiff in the present suit. After her death and his second marriage U Bauk had certain children, and one of them and her husband are the administrators of U Bauk's estate and are the first two defendants in the present suit. In the year 1909 there was brought a redemption suit to redeem the lands from the mortgage with which they had been encumbered by D Laik during his life. What happened in that redemption suit was that the money which was paid into the Court to effect the redemption was paid in by the hand of U Bauk. The decree for redemption decreed the land in the name of the heirs of U. Laik, but there is a controversy as to whether U Bauk immediately entered into possession or whether the heirs entered into possession. At any rate, U Bauk was eventually in possession, whether as agent or on his own account, as has been said, is a matter of controversy, and at the time of the institution of this suit U. Bauk was in possession. The suit as instituted by Ma Thet Pon is in right of her mother Ma Saw Ma, and, as such as heir of U. Laik. She avers, and a certain agreement has been referred to in the judgment of the High Court and put in before this Board which bears out her averment, that the other heirs, that is to say, the elder brothers and sisters of her mother, Ma Saw Ma, had agreed to renounce their rights upon certain terms. She says that, first of all, she is the heir, and, secondly, that it was her money which effected the redemption, although the actual hand that paid the money into Court was that of her father U. Bauk. The defendants, who are the administrators of U. Bauk, say that U. Bauk himself was an heir, in right of his first wife, and it was his own money which he paid for the redemption. It is apparent that one of the crucial facts in this matter is, Was U. Bauk an heir of U. Laik or not ? Their Lordships recognize that in a case from a District Court in Burma pleadings, and, indeed, the whole conduct of the case, can scarcely be scrutinized with the strictness with which a case would be scrutinized in this country. That allowances must be made is abundantly clear from the history of the proceedings in this case, because it is apparent when the pleadings are looked at that really both the plaint iff and the defendants floundered as to, their real case, and that the Court quite rightly took upon itself to straighten out the whole matter and try to discover what the real question between the parties was.

As their Lordships have already said, one crucial fact is, Was U. Bauk an heir or was he not ? That depended neces sarily upon whether his first wife, Ma Saw Ma, survived or did not survive her father. If she did not survive her father, then U. Bauk had no status as an heir at all ; if she did survive her father then the Burmese Law is that U. Bauk, being the surviving husband of a person who ex hypothesi is the then surviving daughter, is treated as one of the heirs of the father. Their Lordships cannot say that the matter is altogether satis factory in this respect, but it is the fact that the High Court, setting forth the family of U. Laik, in the very next sentence say that his family comprised a daughter, Ma Saw Ma, who predeceased him, and then they go on to say that in the redemption suit U. Bauk with another person were unnecessarily made plaintiffs' since their respective spouses had died before they were within reach of the inheritance. It has been very properly argued by Mr. Raikes that there is no real proo