Saket, Mehrauli, Lado Sarai, Khirki Extension, Hauz Rani, Said-ul-Ajaib and Sheikh Sarai — an old village and a planned colony sharing a wall, and between them four homes on every plot that once held one.
Quick answer: At weddings in this belt a sentence gets said sincerely, in front of a room full of relatives: “yeh floor tumhara hai.” Afterwards nothing is done about it, because everybody believes it was settled that evening. Section 123 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 says otherwise: “For the purpose of making a gift of immoveable property, the transfer must be effected by a registered instrument signed by or on behalf of the donor, and attested by at least two witnesses.” There is no spoken route and no handing-over route — delivery works only for moveable property, which is why a set of bangles physically given is in a wholly different position from a floor. And section 122 adds requirements people never think about: a gift is property “made voluntarily and without consideration … and accepted by or on behalf of the donee”, with acceptance “during the lifetime of the donor and while he is still capable of giving” — and “if the donee dies before acceptance, the gift is void.” So what most households actually have is permission, which works perfectly until the owner dies, his circumstances change, or the couple’s own position has to be established. Ceremony ₹5,100, with registration ₹7,100, a wedding already held ₹6,000. We draft, register and advise on no property document, take no property dispute — and we provide no witnesses.
Saket, Mehrauli, Lado Sarai, Khirki Extension, Hauz Rani, Said-ul-Ajaib, Sheikh Sarai, Pushp Vihar, Chirag Dilli at the edge. An old village and a planned colony sharing a boundary wall, and between them an enormous quantity of builder floors — a plot that once held one house now holding four homes, one above the other, each sold or allotted separately.
In that belt a sentence gets said at almost every wedding, in front of a room full of relatives, and it is said sincerely: "yeh floor tumhara hai." The second floor is yours. Live in it, it is yours now.
And in the overwhelming majority of cases, absolutely nothing is done about it afterwards. No document is made. Nothing is registered. Everybody proceeds on the footing that the thing was settled that evening, because in the family's own mind it was.
The law has a word for giving property away and a set of requirements for doing it, and the requirements are not difficult. They are simply unknown, and they are almost never met by a sentence spoken at a function.
This page sets out those requirements in the statute's own words. It is not offering to do any of it — the last section says plainly what we do and do not do, and property work is emphatically on the second list. What this page is for is that a family in this belt should know what the words mean before somebody relies on them for twenty years.
And there is a second reason a marriage service is writing it, which runs through this whole website: whatever anybody's position with a floor turns out to be, the question "and who is she to him?" arrives somewhere in every version of the story. That one we can settle in a morning.
Readers who came for the ordinary mechanics — the sequence, the papers, the timing — will find them on the process, documents and registration pages, with our charges on the fee page.
Section 122 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 is headed "Gift" defined, and it is worth reading slowly because every clause in it is a requirement.
"'Gift' is the transfer of certain existing moveable or immoveable property made voluntarily and without consideration, by one person, called the donor, to another, called the donee, and accepted by or on behalf of the donee."
Then, under the heading Acceptance when to be made: "Such acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and while he is still capable of giving. If the donee dies before acceptance, the gift is void."
| The requirement | What it means on the ground here |
|---|---|
| "certain existing … property" | The property has to exist and be identified. A floor that is still being built, or a share nobody has defined, is not the same thing as an identified property. |
| "made voluntarily and without consideration" | Freely, and for nothing in return. If something is being given in exchange for something else, it is a different transaction with different requirements. |
| "by one person, called the donor, to another, called the donee" | Two identified people. Not "to the children", not "to the family" — the Act is built around a donor and a donee. |
| "and accepted by or on behalf of the donee" | The part everybody forgets. A gift is not complete because somebody gave it. It has to be accepted. |
| "Such acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and while he is still capable of giving." | Two conditions on the timing, and the second one — while he is still capable of giving — is the one families discover far too late, after an illness. |
| "If the donee dies before acceptance, the gift is void." | Stated flatly. Not voidable, not partially effective. Void. |
Read together, section 122 describes something quite unlike what happens at a wedding. It describes an identified property, freely transferred to a named person, for nothing, and taken by that person while the giver is still alive and still able to give.
Section 122 says what a gift is. Section 123, headed "Transfer how effected", says how one is actually made, and it draws a sharp line between two kinds of property.
For immoveable property — a floor, a flat, a plot, a shop: "For the purpose of making a gift of immoveable property, the transfer must be effected by a registered instrument signed by or on behalf of the donor, and attested by at least two witnesses."
Three things in one sentence, and the word at the front of it is "must".
A registered instrument. Not a letter, not an affidavit, not a note in a diary, not a message on a phone, and not a sentence said in front of three hundred people. A registered instrument.
Signed by or on behalf of the donor. By the person giving, or by somebody properly authorised to sign for him.
And attested by at least two witnesses. Two people, again — the same number this website keeps asking families to think carefully about for an entirely different document.
For moveable property — jewellery, a vehicle, money, furniture: "For the purpose of making a gift of moveable property, the transfer may be effected either by a registered instrument signed as aforesaid or by delivery." And the Act adds that such delivery may be made in the same way as goods sold may be delivered.
That difference is the whole practical point of this section. Moveable property can pass by simply handing it over — which is exactly what happens at a wedding, and is why a set of bangles physically given and taken is in a very different position from a floor. Immoveable property cannot pass that way at all. There is no delivery route for a floor. Handing somebody the keys is not a mode of transfer under section 123.
So the sentence said at the function, however sincerely meant and however many people heard it, does not by itself do what everybody in the room believed it did.
None of the above means the family did anything wrong, and none of it means the couple are living there improperly. It means the arrangement is a different kind of thing from the one everybody assumed.
In most of these households what has really happened is permission. The son and his wife live on the second floor with the whole family's agreement, indefinitely, on terms nobody has written down. That is an entirely ordinary way for a family to live and it works perfectly well for as long as everybody is alive, well, and of the same mind.
What has not happened is a transfer. The person whose name is on the property is still the person whose name is on it, and the floor remains part of whatever that person owns.
The consequences of that difference only ever appear at three moments, and a family that knows about them in advance is in a far better position than one that does not.
When the owner dies. The floor forms part of what he leaves. Who takes it is then a question of succession or of a will, not a question of what was said at a wedding in 2013.
When the owner's own circumstances change. A loan, a sale, a dispute among brothers, a second property being bought against this one — the floor is available to all of that, because it is still his.
And when the couple's own position changes. If the marriage itself has to be established for any purpose, or if something happens to the husband, the wife is standing in a house that belongs on paper to somebody else, explaining a relationship rather than producing a document.
We are not suggesting anybody rush out and get anything executed. There may be good reasons the family has left it as it is, including tax, cost, other children, and the owner's own wish to keep control while he lives. Those are real considerations and they are not ours. What is ours to say is that the family should know which of the two situations it is actually in, and should not find out in the year it matters.
Section 123 draws its line between two kinds of property, and the consequences on the moveable side of that line are worth spelling out, because they run in the opposite direction from everything above.
For moveable property the Act allows a second route entirely: delivery. No registration, no instrument, no attestation — "the transfer may be effected either by a registered instrument signed as aforesaid or by delivery", with the Act adding that such delivery may be made in the same way as goods sold may be delivered.
That is why a set given into somebody's hands at a wedding is in a wholly different legal position from a floor pointed at across a courtyard. The handing over is capable of being the transfer itself. Nothing further is required by section 123.
Which produces an odd asymmetry that catches families out in both directions. The item worth several lakhs, handed over in a moment with no paperwork at all, may well have passed. The floor worth many times that, promised formally in front of three hundred people, has not. People routinely believe the opposite — that the big thing must be the settled one because it was announced, and the small thing is loose because nothing was written.
And the practical problem on the moveable side is not the law, it is the evidence. Where delivery is the mode of transfer, what happened is a physical act with no document behind it by design. Years later the question is not whether delivery is a valid route — it plainly is — but whether anybody can establish that this item was delivered, to this person, on that occasion.
That is a record-keeping problem, and it has a cheap answer which this website sets out from a different angle on our Rajouri Garden page: a plain list written in the week after the wedding, photographs of the items, and whatever bills already exist kept in one envelope. We earn nothing from saying so and are not offering to do it.
Two honest limits before anybody reads too much into this. Whether a particular item was in fact delivered, and to whom, is a question of fact that a court decides on evidence, not something a website can pronounce on. And other provisions of the Act and other laws may bear on any given situation — section 123 is one section, not the whole of the subject. Anybody with a live question needs an advocate.
Property is the easiest subject on this website to garble, so the limits are set out as firmly as the sections.
It is not saying a gift deed is the right answer. A gift is one route among several — a sale, a will, a partition, a family arrangement — each with different requirements, costs and consequences. Which is appropriate for a particular family is exactly the sort of question we are not qualified to answer.
It is not saying any particular arrangement is or is not a gift. That depends on facts and documents nobody on a website has seen.
It is not stating any charges. Registration and stamp charges are fixed by law and revised from time to time, and we do not deal in them. Anybody quoting you a figure for such work is not us.
It is not a complete account of the Act. The Transfer of Property Act has a great deal more in it — including provisions about onerous gifts, gifts of existing and future property, and the circumstances in which a gift may be suspended or revoked — none of which is set out here.
And it is not advice. We solemnise and register marriages. We do not draft, execute, register or advise on gift deeds, sale deeds, wills, partitions, family settlements or any property document whatever; we do not deal with the sub-registrar in any property matter; we take no property dispute; we appear before no court or authority; and we accept no payment in connection with any of it. Anybody with a live question about a floor needs an advocate or a qualified conveyancer — and where a woman needs representation, the State provides it without applying any income test at all — our Vikaspuri page explains how that is obtained.
There is a detail in section 123 that we find genuinely striking, and it is the reason this page sits on a marriage website rather than anywhere else.
For a gift of immoveable property the Act requires the instrument to be "attested by at least two witnesses". Two people who watched the donor sign.
A marriage registration asks for the same thing: two people, present, who put their names to what they saw.
That is not a coincidence of drafting. It is the same idea appearing twice. When the law wants an event to be provable years later, by strangers, in a room where nobody present was there at the time, it asks for two human beings who were. Documents can be forged and memories are unreliable, but two independent people who attended is a check that has survived a very long time.
Which is why the advice this website gives about witnesses is the same in both settings. Choose people who will still be alive and reachable in twenty years. Choose people with no stake in the outcome. Do not choose whoever happens to be standing nearby. And never, under any circumstances, use somebody who was not actually present — in a marriage file or in any other document, a witness who was not there is a defect built in deliberately, and it fails at exactly the moment the document is being examined most carefully.
Who qualifies to witness a marriage registration is set out on our witnesses page. Who may attest a property instrument is a question for an advocate, and not for us.
Because at the end of every one of these stories the same question turns up, and it is the only one we can do anything about.
The same shape keeps surfacing on this site out of statutes that have nothing to do with one another. A widow heads the list of dependants under the compensation scheme. “Family” for employees' insurance starts at the spouse, and so does the provident fund's definition, with an assurance riding on the same list. On a tenant's death the tenancy reaches the spouse before anyone else. A shared household stays open to a woman whose name is on none of it. A society's committee must form a view on who followed a dead member. A father-in-law can be looked to by his son's widow. The Income-tax Act settles whose income is whose by identifying the spouse. Even a pavement pitch goes first to one.
Every one of those assumes there is a marriage and says nothing about how you would establish it. That is the gap, and it is the whole of what this business sells.
And to repeat what is reliably misunderstood: registration does not create the marriage. The rites do, under section 7 of the Hindu Marriage Act, on the day, and Order 8 of Delhi's 2014 Order says registration does not go to validity. Section 8 names a narrower object for itself — making the fact easy to prove. Which is precisely what a family in this belt discovers it needed, usually about a decade after the wedding.
There is no time limit. Any earlier year, any state. The Order attaches two set amounts — ₹500 where the file is lodged during the second sixty days and ₹1,000 afterwards — each of which the ADM or DM has power to waive, and neither of them grows however long it is left. Registering a 2013 ceremony costs the same as registering one held this week.
Normally accepted as support: an image showing the ceremony itself in progress with relatives from both households in it; the printed card; anything the priest or institution issued on the day; and, from later years, paperwork that names the pair of you — a bank record, a school admission, a hospital document.
No file avoids these three: the two of you there in person with original documents; two witnesses alongside; and the address set down in the Aadhaar's own wording, not from recall. Should nothing in your own name yet exist for that address, creating the first such record is the subject of our Laxmi Nagar page, while what an old-wedding file consists of is on the late registration page.
A practical section, because this belt has the most confusing addresses in south Delhi and it costs families a second visit.
On one side of the road there is a planned colony where every block, pocket and flat has a number. On the other there is a village lane where the house is known by whose house it is, where numbering restarted at some point nobody remembers, and where four separate homes now sit on a plot that has one municipal identity between them.
What goes wrong. The Aadhaar carries one version. The electricity connection carries the old undivided plot. A bank account carries something a clerk typed years ago. A rent arrangement, if there is one, carries whatever the owner writes. An office comparing two of these reasonably asks which is right, and the answer takes another day.
What to do, and it takes one evening. Lay the Aadhaar, one bank record and one utility document side by side and read the address on each aloud. Decide which version is the true one. Then use that exact version everywhere in the marriage file — the same floor description, the same lane name, the same abbreviations, in the same order.
Do not improve it. If the Aadhaar prints the plot without the floor, the form still follows the Aadhaar. A more accurate address than the document behind it is still a mismatch.
And where the couple live on a floor but no paper of theirs names it, say so when you ring. That situation is thoroughly routine in these lanes and there is a way through it, but the way through is found in a phone call rather than at a counter with a queue behind you. Our Laxmi Nagar page goes through how a household creates its first document in its own name.
Very little is asked of a witness for a marriage registration. Two people attend, and put their names to two facts before the officer: that this is the couple the file describes, and that the ceremony happened. No undertaking is given and no liability attaches. Each of them brings a pair of documents issued to themselves: something carrying a photograph, and something showing their address. Nothing goes in ahead of the day, and no one may sign in place of somebody who did not attend. Our witnesses page sets out who is eligible.
Choose for the long term, not for the morning. Somebody who will be traceable in twenty years — a sibling, a cousin, a long-standing friend in the same city. The most senior person at the wedding is not automatically the right choice, and neither is whoever is free on Tuesday.
In an old village lane, weigh the neighbour question honestly. A neighbour is convenient and usually willing. He is also somebody who may one day have a view about the same plot. Where a household's living arrangement is informal, a witness with no connection to the property is worth more than a convenient one.
And no signature is ever bought. We arrange none, and anyone offering should be turned away. A name signed by somebody who was never present weakens the document exactly where it is examined hardest.
Two certified copies, in two different houses. One with the couple, one with a parent or a sibling living elsewhere. In a building where four households share a staircase, "at home" is less private and less safe than people assume.
Three details into a notebook in the first week: which office issued it, the date carried by the entry, and the serial the register allotted. Holding those, a replacement is one form. Lacking them, a clerk is left searching records on a name and a guessed year.
Photograph it and keep the pictures where either of you can reach them from any device, rather than inside one handset.
Go through it line by line on the day it comes. Check the spelling of each name against the Aadhaar rather than trusting recall. Look at how the two fathers' names have been entered against how each man signs. Match the birth dates to whichever age proof was handed in. Then the wedding date, the two addresses in the form you agreed, and the register's numbering. Getting an error fixed now is a routine form; the same error surfacing a decade on, in front of somebody assessing a claim, is anything but.
And whatever property papers your household does hold, keep them together and know where they are. Not because we want to see them — we do not and never will — but because the commonest thing we hear in this belt is that nobody in the younger generation has ever actually looked at the document the family's whole position rests on.
We print no office names on this website at all, and the choice is deliberate. Which office a file belongs to is settled by the address as it appears in writing; the districts were reorganised through 2026; and anything set in type here could be stale by the time somebody relied on it. Tell us the address in the Aadhaar's wording and we will find out, free, where it currently reports. Nothing done to a boundary afterwards affects a certificate already issued, and a register that has apparently vanished has gone to whichever office absorbed that area — our Mayur Vihar Phase 2 page covers writing in first and only then the RTI route, and the Lajpat Nagar page handles a file that has stalled.
The Haryana border is only a short drive south and west of here. Delhi covers Saket, Mehrauli, Lado Sarai, Khirki, Hauz Rani, Said-ul-Ajaib, Chhatarpur, Sultanpur and Aya Nagar; Gurgaon, Sohna and Faridabad sit in Haryana, and plenty of households in this belt have work or property across that line. That matters twice over. The place where the rites are physically performed is the place of solemnisation. And a notice under the civil route dies at a state boundary — taking it elsewhere means starting the whole period again. Hence the address we ask for is the one each of you sleeps at, not the one the office or the land is at.
| Area | What the file usually turns on here |
|---|---|
| Saket, Pushp Vihar, Sheikh Sarai | Builder floors and an arrangement everybody believes is settled; the form still wants the Aadhaar's address. |
| Mehrauli village, Lado Sarai, Said-ul-Ajaib | Lane addresses with no reliable numbering, and four homes on one municipal identity. |
| Khirki Extension, Hauz Rani, Begumpur | Rooms let without papers; building one record in your own name comes first. |
| Malviya Nagar, Chirag Dilli, Panchsheel | See our Malviya Nagar page. |
| Chhatarpur, Sultanpur, Satbari | Farmhouses and urban-village land — our Chhatarpur page takes that ground. |
| Kalkaji, Govindpuri, Tughlakabad | Covered by our Kalkaji page. |
| Gurgaon, Sohna, Faridabad | Haryana, with their own offices — see our Gurgaon and Faridabad pages. |
| Families whose home town is elsewhere | We will tell you honestly which of the two — Delhi or the state you came from — is the better place for this file, whatever that does to our own work. |
One — treating a sentence at a function as a transfer. Section 123 requires a registered instrument for immoveable property. There is no spoken route and no handing-over route.
Two — assuming keys are delivery. Delivery is a mode of transfer for moveable property only. A floor cannot pass that way.
Three — forgetting that a gift has to be accepted. Section 122 requires acceptance by or on behalf of the donee, and it has to happen while the donor is alive and still capable of giving.
Four — leaving it until the owner is unwell. The Act's words are "while he is still capable of giving". Families discover that phrase at the worst possible time.
Five — assuming a gift is the only route. A sale, a will, a partition and a family arrangement all exist, with different requirements and costs. That choice belongs with an advocate.
Six — nobody in the younger generation having read the document. The family's whole position often rests on one paper that nobody under forty has looked at.
Seven — four versions of the same address across four documents. In a lane with no reliable numbering, a mismatch reads as a different house.
Eight — writing a better address than your proof carries. The form follows the Aadhaar, even where the Aadhaar is less complete than the truth.
Nine — using a neighbour as a witness where the living arrangement is informal. He is convenient today and may have a view about the same plot later.
Ten — leaving the marriage unregistered because the family is settled. Every question in this page's second half begins by asking who is whose spouse.
The whole of our pricing, in one place. Replacement copies, corrections to an entry, apostille work, the managed package, and everything the government collects separately are gathered on the fee page.
| Route | Our fee | Who it suits here |
|---|---|---|
| Arya Samaj ceremony at our mandir | ₹5,100 | The rites alone, finishing with the certificate our mandir gives. Section 7 makes you married that day even though nothing has yet gone into a State register. |
| Ceremony with registration handled | ₹7,100 | Wedding and State record as a single exercise — the route that produces the document every question in this page's second half runs into. |
| A wedding already held, brought onto the record | ₹6,000 | Any earlier year and any state, including the family wedding a decade ago that nobody thought needed registering. |
| Special Marriage Act, whole route | ₹15,000 | The statutory civil route. It carries a residence requirement of its own, and a notice that stands open to objection for thirty days. |
Besides our own charge the government takes three modest sums, all receipted — the Marriage Clerk's ₹100, the ₹200 that must accompany an application under the 2014 Order, and, on the civil route, ₹15 for the District cashier. Where the wedding was in an earlier year the Order brings in two additional flat figures — ₹500 for the second sixty-day period and ₹1,000 thereafter. Both are within the ADM's or DM's power to waive, and leaving it longer increases neither. Nothing on this page concerns stamp or registration charges on a property document, which are not ours and which we do not quote.
Six things are simply not available from us at any price: witnesses; a date that did not happen; a certificate where only one party attended; an assurance about how an officer or a judge will decide; the drafting, execution, registration of or advice on any property document, and any property dispute; and representation before a court or an authority.
Sourced — the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. Section 122, headed "Gift" defined: "'Gift' is the transfer of certain existing moveable or immoveable property made voluntarily and without consideration, by one person, called the donor, to another, called the donee, and accepted by or on behalf of the donee." With, under Acceptance when to be made: "Such acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and while he is still capable of giving. If the donee dies before acceptance, the gift is void." Section 123, headed "Transfer how effected": "For the purpose of making a gift of immoveable property, the transfer must be effected by a registered instrument signed by or on behalf of the donor, and attested by at least two witnesses." And: "For the purpose of making a gift of moveable property, the transfer may be effected either by a registered instrument signed as aforesaid or by delivery." — with the Act adding that such delivery may be made in the same way as goods sold may be delivered.
Sourced — the marriage statutes. Three provisions of the Hindu Marriage Act are relied on: s.7, treating the customary rites as the solemnising act; s.5(ii), free consent as a condition of validity; and s.8, whose declared purpose is facilitating proof. Order 8, the ₹200 payable with an application, the sixty-day window and the two late amounts all come from Delhi's 2014 Order. Turnaround expectations and the ₹100 and ₹15 items are taken from Delhi Revenue Department material. Residence on the civil route, the Marriage Notice Book and the thirty-day objection period are creatures of the Special Marriage Act. False declarations fall under BNS s.236, and apostille and attestation rates are the Ministry of External Affairs' own.
What this page cannot say. Whether anything given in any particular family amounts to a gift, a licence, a permission, a trust or anything else — that turns on facts and documents nobody here has seen. Which route any family should take, or whether it should take one at all. What any property document costs to make or register. What a court would decide about any arrangement. Whether the Act as quoted has since been amended; it is quoted accurately as at the date of this page. And which office serves a given address, allotted on the exact address after the 2026 boundary changes. Plainly: we solemnise and register marriages. We draft, execute, register and advise on no property document of any kind; we deal with no sub-registrar in any property matter; we take no property dispute; we appear before no court or authority; and we take no payment in connection with any of it. Sections 122 and 123 are set out here because a family in this belt should be able to read them for itself before relying on a sentence for twenty years. Anything live belongs with an advocate.
One — tell us when and where the wedding happened, including a family wedding from years ago that nobody registered because the household seemed settled.
Two — give us the residential address of each of you, copied off the Aadhaar rather than recalled, and say if the floor you live on is named on none of your own papers.
Three — send photographs of the documents before anybody travels. Free, ten minutes, and it settles what is missing while you are still at home.
Dial +91 8376863962. Nothing about payment comes up until you have been told the route that applies, what we would charge, and the government's separate share. Should it emerge that another state is where this file belongs, or that a lawyer is what the situation actually calls for, that is what you will be told, and the call will still have cost you nothing.
Expert articles on every marriage topic — read before you decide
Complete 2026 process from notice to certificate.
Read Article →Full checklist — Aadhaar, affidavits, witnesses.
Read Article →Transparent breakdown — official + service costs.
Read Article →Your rights, family pressure, police protection.
Read Article →Apostille, Embassy NOC, spouse visa explained.
Read Article →Honest truth about Arya Samaj same-day option.
Read Article →