New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ruled that once an employee gets married, any nomination previously made in favour of a parent for the General Provident Fund (GPF) automatically ceases. The fund must now be equally shared between the employee’s spouse and parents.

A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh set aside the Bombay High Court’s ruling, restoring the Central Administrative Tribunal’s (CAT) decision to divide the GPF equally between the wife and the mother of the deceased employee.

“The nomination in favour of the deceased’s mother becomes invalid once he acquires a family through marriage,” the court noted. “A nomination does not confer a superior claim over eligible family members.”

Background

The case involved a Defence Accounts Department employee who, in 2000

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