THE jurisprudence emanating from the Supreme Court in inheritance cases is perturbingly inconsistent regarding the defence of limitation, and its recent ruling in ‘Noor Muhammad vs Ghulam Haider’ (2026) buttresses this. The doctrine of stare decisis (‘stand by things already decided’), can scarcely afford inconsistency on such a tectonic question of law, when virtually every third family in the country is grappling with an inheritance case.

In the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has issued no less than 25 reported judgements in inheritance cases dealing with defence of limitation, and the allied defences of waiver, acquiesce and estoppel (which we shall collectively refer to as the defence of ‘limitation’). Yet when clients ask, based on the records of their case, ‘how probable is it for the defence of limitation to succeed?’, one is banefully disarmed, as a practitioner, because of inconsistent and confounding jurisprudence.

From Japan to Argentina, claims before courts, have to be brought within a certain time frame, otherwise statutes of limitation prohibit archaic disputes from being resurrected. Statutes of limitation encapsulate a policy fostering ‘diligence’. Accordingly, wrongs need timely adjudication, because delay........

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