Bangladesh’s property law amendment puts lifetime security on the deed

In Sheikh Sadi village, Jamalpur, 75-year-old Yad Ali once earned his living cutting earth and selling bananas. When age and disability put an end to that, his younger son, Umar Farooq, offered to look after him for two decimals of land — then had him sign over the entire 39.5-decimal homestead instead. 

When Yad Ali went to court to cancel the deed, his son and daughter-in-law beat him and his wife with sticks and drove them from their home. The elderly man now survives by begging.

In Burli village, Keshabpur upazila, Jashore, a similar ordeal recently brought Barik Gazi, 84, and his wife Shar Banu, 78, to the Upazila Nirbahi Officer's (UNO's) office, seeking a fair hearing. 

Unable to walk, they were taken there in a hired van by their four daughters, who filed a written complaint against the couple's two sons. Their younger son, Sayeed Gazi, had taken his father to Keshabpur for treatment the previous year and used the visit to register 24 decimals of his land in his own name. When mediation by the local union parishad failed, their elder son, Sajjat Gazi, demolished the couple's living quarters and evicted them.

These are not isolated cases; they illustrate a systemic vulnerability long embedded in Bangladesh's civil property framework. 

Under the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, and under traditional personal gift mechanisms like Heba, transferring property required an immediate, total surrender of both ownership and possession. Once a parent signed a gift deed, they lost all legal title and usufruct rights and became entirely dependent on their children's goodwill. 

If neglect or eviction followed, they had little legal recourse.

Why was a new law needed?

To close this statutory gap, the Jatiya Sangsad recently passed the Transfer of Property (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The legislation inserts two sections into the 1882 Act, introducing a new mode of transfer titled "Gift reserving life interest". 

Under the new Section 122A, parents or grandparents transferring property to children or grandchildren, or spouses transferring property to each other, can convey ownership while legally reserving the right to reside in, use and enjoy the property — including collecting rental yields or income — for the remainder of their natural lives.

This reserved lifetime right survives even if the recipient dies before the donor: the underlying ownership passes to the recipient's legal heirs, while the donor's occupancy remains intact. For immovable property, the reservation must be explicitly recorded in a registered deed. 

And under Section 122B, once registered, the gift cannot be unilaterally revoked, but the donor and recipient may jointly modify or revoke it through another registered deed to meet a genuine financial, medical or family need. 

If a party is legally incapacitated, the modification requires the approval of a district judge. As Law Minister Md Asaduzzaman explained, the amendment creates an optional, parallel civil route for property transfer, protecting vulnerable elderly parents without altering existing personal laws.

Legal experts view the amendment as a crucial step towards social security, agreeing that separating ownership from lifetime usufruct fills a vital social gap, offering essential legal shelter to parents and women. 

Shirin Parvin Haque, a founding member of Naripokkho, told Prothom Alo that many elderly citizens face severe vulnerability when their children take their assets or pensions, making state-backed protective mechanisms essential. 

Bangladesh Mahila Parishad President Fauzia Moslem was quoted in the same report arguing that the law offers important protection in old age, particularly for women given the country's social context.

Supreme Court senior advocate and human rights activist Barrister Sara Hossain gave a detailed assessment of the law's mechanics and its potential to TBS. 

Asked about the central problem the amendment addresses, she said, "The amendment addresses a significant problem. Before the amendment, once a parent made a gift or Heba of their property, they lost both ownership and possession entirely, and any legal claim over how the property was used or enjoyed. 

"This left many elderly parents dependent entirely on their children's goodwill once the transfer was made, with no security if that support did not follow," she added.

On the remedy the new law provides, Hossain said, "The new law allows a parent who is a donor to reserve a right to continue to use the property for their lifetime and also allows for the gift to be revoked or varied. This can be done by mutual consent or through an application by the donor to a court." 

As a result, she said, the amendment gives the donor a legally enforceable position that simply did not exist before and is a significant step forward in protecting elderly property owners.

She also pointed to the law's wider implications beyond elder care, "This legal change could potentially also be transformative in securing and expanding women's rights to property, and also the rights of people with disabilities, by allowing property transfers to be made by parents in their lifetimes, in processes that are separate and parallel to those that already exist under personal laws."

Lessons from across the world

Bangladesh's reform aligns with global frameworks that protect elderly property owners through usufruct retention or statutory revocation. As Asaduzzaman noted, jurisdictions worldwide separate ownership corpus (ayn) from usufruct rights (manafi).

In Pakistan, a landmark 1963 Supreme Court ruling held that a gift (heba) of the corpus of a property to a child can validly coexist with a reserved lifetime usufruct in favour of the parent, and that reserving occupancy or income rights does not invalidate the underlying gift. 

Pakistan went further with the Parents Protection Ordinance, 2021, which makes it a criminal offence for children to evict parents from a home regardless of who holds the title.

India adopted a post-hoc statutory remedy under Section 23 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007. Where a senior citizen transfers property on condition of receiving maintenance and the child fails to provide it, the transfer is deemed to have been made by fraud or undue influence and can be declared void by a tribunal. 

In the US, families use Life Estate Deeds and Enhanced Life Estate Deeds (Lady Bird Deeds), under which parents convey a remainder interest to their children while retaining an inviolable life estate securing exclusive possession and income until death. 

Malaysia permits Heba Umra (life-grant transfers), allowing parents to transfer legal title while reserving lifetime occupancy or rental yields, while Singapore allows life estates registered under the Land Titles Act to stop children selling or mortgaging the home without the parent's consent.

Ifs and buts

Despite its promise, translating the 2026 amendment into practical protection will require addressing some procedural gaps. 

Hossain flagged the risk of new disputes, "There is a risk that the amendment may give rise to new disputes, particularly regarding implementation of the revocation and variation process under Section 122B. If the donor and the donee don't agree on this, then the issue can go before a District Judge, but the Act doesn't spell out what criteria will be considered, or what process will be followed, or whether there will be an appeal. These questions need some clarification."

To guard against coercion at the point of execution, Hossain proposed concrete safeguards, "The safeguards needed to prevent elderly parents from being pressured into transferring property need to be put in place at the point of execution. Currently, registration documents only require being signed and witnessed, but do not require any statement that the donor acted of their own free will." 

She recommended that "if this requirement is included, and the registration officer has a duty to confirm this [by speaking with the donor], that could prevent registration taking place where it is clear that the elderly parent does not have capacity to sign or does not freely consent."

Hossain also called for public legal literacy campaigns in simple Bangla and suggested a mandatory waiting period between declaring intent to transfer and final registration. On family transparency, she proposed requiring notice to be given to all heirs at the time of registration, "This would ensure that they are aware of the transfer, although they would not have any rights to block it."

She also cautioned against the law being misused, "There is a concern that the law could be used regressively — not to ensure transfer of property in equal shares to all children, for example, but instead to deprive certain heirs of the shares of property to which they would otherwise be entitled, including female heirs. There needs to be further consideration of how to forestall such situations."