Lahore High Court (LHC) has given that properties can be transferred through verbal gifts based on natural love, love and personal service, adding that depriving a legal heir alone was not sufficient to invalid such transfers unless malicious intention was proven. Justice Anwaar Hussain made these observations while hearing a complex inheritance involving sons of two wives of a deceased property owner. The case concerned real estate mutations in favor of the respondent, allegedly executed through oral gifts. The petitions, including Muhammad Naseem, through the lawyer Mian Dawood, argued that such gifts made for the purpose of depriving other legal heirs, constituted Zarar (damage) and had to be set aside in the light of Koranic injunction and hadith. They trusted the court’s previous decision in Liaqat Ali against Shahnaz Akhtar (2025 LHC 693) to support their claim. However, Justice Hussain clarified that the application of the principles laid down in the Liaqat Ali case on any question, without distinguishing between facts, can lead to injustice and weaken a person’s right to dispose of property legally during their lifetime out of true love and service. Attorney Abdul Qadus Rawal, who appeared to the respondent, supported the contemporary conclusions of lower courts and noted that no specific accusations of fraud or cooperation had been substantiated. He claimed that the oral gifts were executed by natural love in the presence of witnesses whose statements were registered and further elaborated in the respondent’s written statement. Justice Hussain acknowledged that the court in the Liaqat Ali case had stated that a gift made by a father of a single heir of hatred against other heirs solely to disinfect them, constitutes Zarar and is invalid under Islamic principles.
‘Property may be gifted verbal’
