Mappilla Wills Act (VII of 1928) which provided that testamentary dispositions by Mappillas, governed by the Marumakkathayam or Aliyasanthana Law of Inheritance in respect of property, which but for such testamentary disposition would devolve in accordance with the provisions of the Mappilla Succession Act of 1918, shall be governed by the Muhammadan Law relating to wills and not by the Malabar Wills Act of 1898. The next Act, which was of a far more comprehensive nature than the two earlier Acts, is the Mappilla Marumakkathayam Act (Madras Act XVII of 1939). In several respects this corresponds to the Marumakkathayam Act (Madras Act XXII of 1933). It deals with the tarwad and its management, the duties of the karnavan and the rights of the junior members of the tarwad, investment of the surplus income, debts and alienations, removal of the karnavan partition and registration of tarwads. Section 13 of this Act conferred for the first time on an individual member of a tarwad the right to take his or her share of the properties of the tarwad over which the tarwad had power of disposal and to separate from the tarwad. Section 17 provided that in case of a division u/s 13 the individual member shall be entitled to such share of the tarwad properties as would fall to such individual member if a division per capita were made among all the members of the tarwad then existing. Succession to the property obtained by an individual member on partition was to be governed by the Islamic Law of Inheritance (section 18).
