Agnate

When a Hindu male dies intestate, the Hindu Succession Act does not stop at Class I heirs and Class II heirs. If neither group has a surviving member, the property still has to go somewhere, and the Act reaches further into the family tree.

That next tier is the agnate. A person is an agnate of another if the two are related by blood or adoption, wholly through males. Father, paternal grandfather, paternal uncle and his sons are all agnates — the chain of relationship never passes through a woman at any link.

The Act sets a strict order of priority among heirs (Section 8): Class I heirs first, and only if none survive, Class II heirs; only if there is no heir in either class does property pass to agnates; and only if there is no agnate does it pass to cognates — relatives connected through blood or adoption but not wholly through males, meaning the chain passes through at least one woman somewhere along the line.

When there is more than one agnate (or more than one cognate), Section 12 decides who is preferred, using degrees of ascent and descent counted from the deceased (Section 13):

1. The heir with fewer or no degrees of ascent is preferred.
2. If ascent is equal (or nil for both), the heir with fewer or no degrees of descent is preferred.
3. If neither test separates them, they take simultaneously.

Degrees are counted inclusive of the intestate, and each generation — up or down — counts as one degree.

Mr Deshmukh, a Hindu, dies intestate with no surviving Class I or Class II heir — no widow, children, mother, father, siblings or any of the other named relatives. His estate, worth Rs 80,00,000, must pass to his agnates.

Two surviving relatives are agnates:

• His father's brother's son (a paternal first cousin) — related wholly through males (father → grandfather → grandfather's son → his son).
• His father's sister's son — related through his father's sister, a woman in the chain, so this relative is a cognate, not an agnate.

Under Section 12, agnates take before cognates. So the entire Rs 80,00,000 passes to the paternal cousin (the agnate), and the cousin through the father's sister (the cognate) inherits nothing — even though, in ordinary family terms, the two cousins might seem equally close to the deceased.

Chapter 14 (Basics of Estate Planning), section 14.4.2 — The Hindu Succession Act — defines agnate and cognate immediately after listing Class I and Class II heirs, and gives Sections 8, 9, 12 and 13 on order of succession and computation of degrees. Expect a family-tree question testing whether a given relative is an agnate or a cognate, and a recall question on the four-tier order: Class I, Class II, agnates, cognates.

• "Wholly through males" is the test. One female link anywhere in the chain — even a single sister or daughter — makes the relative a cognate, not an agnate.
• Agnates inherit only after both Class I and Class II heirs are exhausted, not merely after Class I.
• Agnates always rank ahead of cognates, whatever the degree of relationship, once the case reaches that tier at all.
• Adoption counts the same as blood for both agnates and cognates — the Act treats the two equally.
• Do not confuse this tier with the Class I heirs list itself — a father, for instance, is a Class II heir, not an agnate; agnates matter only once Class I and Class II are both empty.