India, Nov. 8 -- Thirty-six years after a Malabar Hill woman passed away, the Bombay high court on Wednesday granted probate to her will of 1989 in which she had bequeathed her wealth to her London-based daughter while leaving the son she lived with out of it. Under the Indian Succession Act, probate is the court's seal of approval on a will that makes it valid and enforceable. The court rejected the son's argument that his sister had influenced his mother's decision with expensive gifts.

"It would be too much to hold that the mother would be influenced by these gifts to the extent of giving her daughter the entire property to the exclusion of her only son and his family," a division bench of Justices Sarang Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Bhonsa...