An unprobated Will does not bar suit maintainability or warrant plaint rejection.

Respondents 1 and 2 instituted O.S. No. 163 of 2022 before the XXIV Assistant City Civil Court, Chennai, seeking declarations that two sale deeds dated 5 November 2018 and 30 January 2020 were null and not binding on them, together with a permanent injunction against the third defendant.

Their claim was founded on an unprobated Will dated 9 July 1996.

The petitioner, who was the third defendant, filed I.A. No. 5 of 2026 under Order VII Rule 11 CPC seeking rejection of the plaint on the ground that a suit based on an unprobated Will was barred by Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.

She also contended that the repeal of Section 213 would not retrospectively validate the Will and pointed out that the plaintiffs’ earlier probate petition, O.P. No. 740 of 2021, had been dismissed on 21 November 2023.

The Trial Court dismissed the application on 21 July 2026, holding that the suit was not barred and that the genuineness and effect of the Will had to be examined during trial.

The petitioner challenged that order under Article 227 of the Constitution.

Whether a plaint seeking declarations and injunctions can be maintained when the plaintiffs rely on an unprobated Will?

Whether the unprobated Will, and the repeal of Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, rendered the suit barred by law so as to justify rejection of the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 CPC?

Whether the legal effect of the repeal of Section 213, including its temporal operation, should be decided at the stage of considering the plaint or during the trial when the Will is tendered in evidence?

The Court applied Order VII Rule 11 CPC, under which a plaint may be rejected only where, from the statements in the plaint itself, the suit is barred by law or suffers from one of the statutory defects.

It considered Sections 211 and 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925: the plaintiffs relied on Section 211 to contend that rights under the Will vested in the legatees upon the testator’s death, while the petitioner relied on Section 213 to contend that an unprobated Will could not support the suit.

The Court held that reliance on an unprobated Will does not, by itself, create a bar to instituting or maintaining a civil suit; the principal evidentiary difficulty arises when the Will is sought to be admitted or marked in evidence.

The Court noted the authorities cited by the plaintiffs, including Ramniklal v. Bhupendra Impex Pvt. Ltd., 2001 (2) Mh.L.J. 536, Binapani Kar Chowdhury v. Sri Satyabrata Basu, (2006) 10 SCC 442, and Meyyappa Chetty v. Supramanian Chetty, AIR 1916 PC 202.

The Court distinguished between the maintainability of the suit and the admissibility and proof of the Will.

Although the Will had not been probated, the plaintiffs’ asserted rights could form the basis of a civil claim, and the plaint did not disclose an absolute statutory bar at the threshold.

The petitioner’s objection concerned the evidentiary use of the Will rather than the institution of the suit itself. Consequently, the objection could not justify rejection of the plaint under Order VII Rule 11 CPC.

The Court further held that the question whether the repeal of Section 213 applied to the Will, and whether the repeal operated retrospectively or prospectively, should be addressed when the Will was tendered for marking and proof during trial, not at the preliminary stage.

The Trial Court was therefore correct in refusing to reject the plaint, although it ought not to have conclusively determined the effect of the repeal at that stage.

The issue regarding the effect of the repeal of Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act was expressly left open for determination by the Trial Court when the Will was sought to be marked and proved, uninfluenced by the impugned order or the revision order.

The Civil Revision Petition was disposed of accordingly; the petitioner was directed to file her written statement within four weeks, with no order as to costs, and the connected miscellaneous petition was closed.