Court caseAIR 1967 SC 878

An elderly man, Prasanna Kumar, who had an only son, Balaram, made a deed of settlement in 1944 giving a valuable property to Balaram's minor son, his grandson Subhas Chandra. Prasanna Kumar lived for several years afterwards without questioning the deed. After his death, other members of the family sued to set the settlement aside, alleging that Balaram had used his influence over his aged father to procure the gift for his own son.

The Supreme Court (Mitter J) upheld the gift. Following Raghunath Prasad, the Court said the first question is whether the relations between the parties were such that one could dominate the will of the other, and the second whether the transaction was in fact induced by undue influence; only then does s. 16(3) shift the burden. A relationship of parent and child does not by itself raise a presumption of undue influence, and a grandfather giving property to his only grandson, the natural object of his affection, is doing nothing unnatural. There was no evidence that the donor was of weak mind or that the son had actually used any influence; the plaintiffs had not even pleaded the particulars of the undue influence relied on.