Question

A transfer Rs. 500 to his niece C, if she will desert her husband. The transfer is

• A. Void
• B. Voidable
• C. Valid
• D. None of the above

Hint:

Under the Transfer of Property Act (Section 25) and the Contract Act (Section 23), any condition or consideration that is illegal, immoral, or against public policy will render the transaction void. Conditions that interfere with marital relations are a classic example of this.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

The transfer here is entirely conditional on C deserting her husband, so its fate depends on whether that condition is one the law will tolerate.

1. Void: Section 25 of the Transfer of Property Act voids any transfer whose condition is immoral or opposed to public policy, and a condition rewarding the breakup of a marriage falls squarely into that category, so the transfer fails entirely.
2. Voidable: this would apply if the defect were something like fraud or undue influence, giving a party the choice to avoid it, but here the condition itself is unlawful in substance, which makes the transfer fail automatically rather than merely being avoidable.
3. Valid: upholding a transfer meant to incentivise desertion would run directly against the policy of protecting marriage, so this cannot be right.
4. None of the above: unnecessary, since Section 25 directly addresses conditions of this kind.

The correct answer is Void.

Answer 2

Rather than starting from the section number, it helps to reason from first principles about what the law is trying to protect, the stability of marriage, and see where each option leads.

1. Valid: if courts enforced this kind of arrangement, money would become a tool for encouraging spouses to abandon their marriages, an outcome no legal system built around protecting the family would allow, so this cannot stand.
2. Voidable: treating the transfer as merely voidable would mean it stays effective unless someone actively challenges it, but a condition that is inherently immoral shouldn't need a challenge to be undone, the law itself refuses to give it effect from the outset.
3. None of the above: this only applies if the correct legal consequence weren't one of the other three options, but it is.
4. Void: because the very purpose of the condition, inducing a wife to desert her husband, offends public policy protecting marriage, the law treats the condition as incapable of being enforced, and since the whole transfer depends on that one condition, the transfer collapses along with it from the very beginning.

Reasoning from the policy the law is protecting leads to the same conclusion, the correct answer is Void.