BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 7 Family Law II Solved Question Papers with Answers 2017 to 2026 - Mumbai University | munotes

Family Law II is Hindu law, and the folder name understates it. Five statutes carry most of the paper, the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, the Hindu Succession Act 1956, the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956 and the Family Courts Act 1984, together with the uncodified law of the joint family, the coparcenary, the karta and partition, which no statute has replaced. But the newer papers reach well outside them. The two 75 mark papers here set the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005, the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007, the Special Marriage Act 1954, the Benami Transactions Act and the CARA Adoption Regulations 2022, which are not Hindu law at all. A candidate who revised only the five Acts would lose about a fifth of either of those papers.

The single most useful thing to know about the situational section is that its problems are almost never decided by the topic they appear to be about. They are decided by one word or one date inside a section, and the same handful of words come round again and again. Section 11 of the Adoptions Act bars an adoption where the adopter has a Hindu son living, so the widow in the 2019-20 paper whose son has converted may still adopt, because a converted son is not a Hindu son. The same section requires twenty-one years between adopter and child only where the two are of opposite sexes, so in the second 2019-20 paper the unmarried woman of twenty-five cannot adopt a boy of five, twenty years being one short, while her friend of twenty-seven may adopt a girl of three, no gap at all being required. Section 26 of the Succession Act disqualifies only the children born to a convert after his conversion, and this folder sets that fact both ways round, the grandsons born after the conversion in 2018-19 taking nothing and the grandsons born before it in the 2025-26 ATKT paper taking their father's share. Section 15(2), which sends a woman's inherited property back to the family it came from, is switched off entirely by any surviving child, so in the 2023-24 ATKT paper the two sons by two different husbands take everything equally, each inheriting from the other man's estate. Read the words before you reach for the topic.

About six fact patterns supply the whole of the situational section, and they are worth preparing as set pieces. An heir or a spouse who has converted to another religion, in five of the thirteen papers. Two people dying together in one accident, so that two estates have to be worked out separately, in four. A woman dying intestate and the question whether section 15(2) applies to what she left, in five. Whether this particular person may adopt this particular child, in four. Custody and guardianship after a marriage has broken down. And a dowry demand made after the wedding, usually by the mother-in-law rather than the husband. Every one of them is bookwork plus application, so the definition half of the answer is free marks.

One trap is set four times in this folder, in the 2019-20, 2022-23, 2022-23 ATKT and 2023-24 papers, and it catches candidates who have learned the Class I list without reading it. The mother is a Class I heir; the father is only a Class II heir, standing alone in the first entry of that class. So a man survived by his father and his mother leaves the whole estate to his mother and nothing at all to his father, and the exclusion is total rather than proportionate, because Class II is reached only if there is no heir of Class I. The 1956 Act put in Class I the people who depended on the deceased, the widow, the children and the mother, and left the ascendants and collaterals to Class II.

Three amendments decide more answers in this subject than any judgment, and a textbook printed before them will state the law wrongly. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 2005, in force from 9 September 2005, made a daughter a coparcener by birth, abolished survivorship, abolished the pious obligation for debts contracted after that date, and omitted sections 23 and 24, so a remarried widow is no longer disqualified from inheriting and a female heir is no longer barred from claiming partition of a dwelling house. The Personal Laws (Amendment) Act 2010, in force from 31 August 2010, rewrote section 8 of the Adoptions Act so that a married woman may adopt with her husband's consent, where before she could not adopt at all, and gave the father and mother an equal right to give a child in adoption. And the Personal Laws (Amendment) Act 2019 removed leprosy as a ground of divorce from section 13 of the Marriage Act and as a ground of separate maintenance from section 18 of the Adoptions Act. Books still in circulation print all three provisions as they stood before.

The paper has run in three shapes and the code on the first page tells you which. Up to 2019-20 it was 100 marks in three hours, under Q.P. Code 05272 and then code 66902, in sections of 20, 20, 12 and 48. From 2022-23 it is 60 marks in two hours under code 66912, in sections of 12, 12, 12 and 24. From 2025-26 there is a third pattern, 75 marks in two and a half hours under code 67142, in sections of 12, 12, 12 and 39, and the 2025-26 ATKT sitting produced one paper under each of the two current codes. The useful point is that the first three sections of every 60 mark and every 75 mark paper in this folder are worth exactly 12 marks each. Thirty six of the marks are the same paper whichever code you sit, and only the last section moves. The 2021-22 sitting is the outlier: an online examination of twenty multiple choice questions and ten descriptive ones, with no marks and no duration printed on it anywhere.

Two things about the files will save you time. The 2019-20 file is not one paper but two complete 100 mark papers bound together, form 60719 on its first two pages and form 77630 on the next two, each footed Page 1 of 4 and Page 2 of 4 in its own right, which is why this subject shows fifty answers under a single year. And the 2024-25 regular and ATKT files are the same document byte for byte, the candidate's own margin note reading Regular and ATKT, so the University set one paper for both cohorts. Fourteen files in this folder are thirteen papers.

These are model answers prepared by munotes. They are a study aid and not official University answer keys, which the University of Mumbai does not publish.