MUMBAI, May 11 -- The Bombay High Court has ruled that under the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, all transfers made by elderly parents to their children are implicitly conditional and subject to the beneficiary providing them with basic amenities. A single judge bench of justice Sanjay S Deshmukh on Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by a 46-year-old Sangli resident, challenging an order passed by the senior citizen appellate tribunal in Sangli in September 2025, which cancelled the relinquishment made by his 67-year-old mother in his favour. After his father's death in June 2007, two sisters of the man relinquished their rights in their father's ancestral and self-earned properties in Sangli and its twin town, Kupwad in 2013. Subsequently, their mother also relinquished her rights in the property left behind by her late husband. Later, the man transferred a part of the property to his estranged wife towards maintenance for her. His mother, however, approached the senior citizen tribunal, seeking cancellation of the two relinquishment deeds executed by her in favour of her son and for maintenance. Acting on her plea, the tribunal cancelled the two deeds and ordered the man to pay the 67-year-old woman Rs.10,000 per month. The tribunal also dismissed the man's appeal, prompting him to approach the high court. Before the single judge bench, the man's lawyer argued that his mother had filed a civil suit for a similar prayer and the relinquishment deeds were executed voluntarily without any express stipulation or condition of maintenance, and in absence of specific conditions in the gift deed for providing maintenance to the mother-transferor, the deed could not have been revoked. Justice Deshmukh rejected the argument, observing that under section 23 of the Senior Citizens Act, all gifts made by senior citizens in favour of their children were implicitly conditional. "A reading of section 23(1) of the Act of 2007 establishes that when a property is transferred by a senior citizen, whether by gift or otherwise, it is both implicitly vis-a-vis explicitly subject to the condition that the transferee shall provide the transferor with basic amenities and physical needs," the judge said. The judge said the statute incorporates a legal fiction that if the transferee, after obtaining the benefit of the transfer, fails to fulfill these essential obligations, the transfer is deemed to have been vitiated by fraud, coercion, or undue influence; in cases of breach, the tribunal is statutorily empowered to declare the transfer void at the option of the senior citizen, ensuring that property rights do not supersede the fundamental right to survival and dignity. The court also rejected the argument advanced on behalf of the 46-year-old man that mere payment of maintenance would absolve him from the applicability of section 23. The court said section 23 was a statutory safeguard designed to restore the property to a senior citizen when a transfer had been misused to leave them destitute or vulnerable. Therefore, the subsequent payment of a monthly sum would not reverse the situation that triggered the tribunal's power to cancel the relinquishment. "To accept the petitioner's argument would allow a transferee to strip a parent of their life's assets and then seek to 'buy off' the statutory protection of the parent's property rights" by paying them a monthly sum, the court added....