The main legal point established in the judgment is the validity of alienation of interest by one joint tenant to another, even for the entire lifetime of the alienating tenant, and the inapplicability of the acceleration of interest and the question of inheritance in such cases.

Oldfield, J.

1. The four items of suit property and others fell to two sisters, Vedambal and 6th defendant, in succession to their father; but Vedambal was in separate possession of the suit items under Ex. A, by which they, to the extent open to them, divided the estate. Vedambal died after alienating item 3 and a portion of item 4, to which this second appeal relates, to 3rd, 4th and 5th defendants. The plaintiffs, the sons of 6th defendant, have sued for a declaration of the invalidity of those alienations and for possession of those items. The question is whether they are entitled to sue, the lower appellate Court having held that they are and remanded the suit for trial on the merits.

2. In the plaint the title relied on is that the plaintiffs are the heirs of Veerabhadra, the father of Vedambal and 6th defendant; that is, reversioners of his estate. It is therefore impossible to proceed on the alternative ground, on which it was proposed to support the lower appellate Courts decision, that they could sue as heirs of Vedambal. Moreover, even if that ground were not excluded by the pleading, further reference to it would serve no purpose. For, whatever the extent of Vedambals interest, it does not appear on principle or authority how her heirs can have had any vested or other right in the property during her life time, which could debar her from alienating it to their prejudice or which they can rely on against 3rd, 4th and 5th defendants, her alienees.

3. The plaintiffs claim as reversioners of Veerabhadras estate would ordinarily be negatived by the fact that the interest of the 6th defendant, his surviving female heir, is still outstanding; and they accordingly contend that the agreement between her and Vedambal, Ex. A, effected a separation between the two shares, into which the estate under it was divided, so absolute as to constitute each share a distinct estate, in respect of which the reversioners succession would open separately on the death of the sharer concerned. Ex. A. no doubt is expressed in unqualified language, the parties to it agreeing to "enjoy severally for ever absolutely the properties which have fallen to their respective selves" and reciting that "neither should hereafter have a right over the properties set apart for the other," and, if it was open to them to relinquish their whole actual and future interests, each in the others share, it must be held that they did so. It is urged that, whilst they could do so with the effect of depriving the survivor of the succession to the share of the one first deceased, the latters share would pass, not to her own heirs, until the life estate might be determined on the survivors death, but at once to the reversioners.

4. In favour of this contention there is only one authority. Rindamma v. Venkataramappa (1866) 3 M.H.C.R. 268; but the passage relied on it is, as a later case points out, only a non-committal reference to a possible conclusion on facts other than those actually before the Court. In Subbammal v. Lakshmana Iyer (1914) M.L.J. 479, on which the decision of the lower appellate Court is based, the dispute was between the surviving female life-tenant and her deceased co-tenants heir. But it turned to some extent on the wording of the document under construction and there was nothing in the judgment directly in favour of the last male owners reversioner, there being nothing to show that the deceaseds heir was regarded as possessing that character. And in fact the lower appellate Court would seem to have erred, because it paid no attention to this aspect of the case. In Ramakkal v. Ramaswami Naicken (1899) I.L.R. 22 M. 522 and Kanni Ammal v. Ammakannu Ammal (1899) I.L.R. 33 M. 504 the parties were the surviving life-tenant and an alienee from the deceased life-tenant, the decision in each case being in favour of the latter. The inference from these two authorities is that, as the interest of the deceased was alienable, so it would in the absence of