Presumption of marriage due to long cohabitation.

This appal arises out of a suit, Original Suit No. 152 of 1960 filed by respondents 1 and 2 herein for partition and separate possession of their 1/6th share in the properties specified in Schedules A to C attached to the plaint. Annavi, is the fifth defendant in the suit and his sons who are now alive are defendants 1 to 4. Annavi had a son by name Arumugham who died in 1954. The first plaintiff, Pakkiam Ammal has filed the present suit for partition claiming to be the legally wedded wife of this Arumugham, her marriage having taken place in 1943. The second plaintiff is their daughter born in June, 1945. The case of the first plaintiff is that her husband Arumugham and the defendants, her father-in-law and brothers-in-law, constituted members of a joint Hindu undivided family, that all the properties involved in the suit are joint family properties, that her husband and the plaintiffs were living with the defendants in the family house at Manapparai and that even after the death of Arumugham the plaintiffs continued to be with the defendants 1 and 3 to 5 at Manapparai, that all throughout from the time of her marriage in 1943 she was acknowledged and treated as the legally wedded wife of Arumugham, that her daughter was also acknowledged and treated as their legitimate daughter by all the members of the family, that the fifth defendant was particularly attached towards the second plaintiff, that the defendants brought up the second plaintiff just like the other children in the family, that they put her in the school and that the relationship was throughout friendly and cordial till the middle of 1959, when misunderstandings arose consequent upon the first plaintiff not acceding to the proposal of defendants 1 to 5 that her daughter, the second plaintiff, should be married to one Sachidanandam, the wife’s brother of the first defendant who was aged about 40 years. The first plaintff’s further case is that consequent upon these misunderstandings, she and her daughter were driven out of the family house in the middle of October, 1959 resulting in the present suit for partition and allotment of 1/6th share of her husband under the Hindu Women’s Rights to Property Act and also for suitable provision for maintenance and marriage expenses of her daughter. In 1959, the father Annavi Pillai had executed a release deed taking some properties for himself and relinquished his interest in the rest of the properties and one month later in July, 1959, a partition evidenced by a registered deed was effected between the four brothers, defendants 1 to 4. The plaintiffs have attacked these transactions as fraudulently brought about to defeat their rights.

The defendants resisted the suit questioning the status of the plaintiff as the legally wedded wife of Arumugham. They even went to the extent of alleging that the first plaintiff was living a life of prostitution and the second plaintiff is the offspring of such prostitution. The substance of their defence is that this Arumugham did not prosecute his studies properly was leading wayward life, getting out of the control of the father, left the family house and to eke his livelihood, he has been going to various places like Madura, Kattuputhur, Muthupet, etc., etc., that again when he came back to the father in 1944, he executed a release deed on 10th November, 1944 receiving a sum of Rs. 500, that under that release deed, this Arumugham had relinquished all his rights and that Arumugham was not entitled to any rights in the suit properties at the time of his death in 1954. Their further case is that the properties were originally the self-acquired properties of the father, the fifth defendant, that they became joint family properties as a result of blending and that when Arumugham himself had no rights in the properties, the plaintiffs cannot claim any right.

The trial Court on a consideration of the oral and documentary evidence held that Arumugham married the first plaintiff in