Rightly said Mr Harikrishnan sir, i just remembered my training on LTA, TA & other benefits and our mentor / faculty mentioned that in such cases of disputes the court proceedings took a long time and after the announcement was made the comapany or organization was required to pay some interest on the delayed period, because today it is 3 lakhs and after 5 years it will have some interest accumulated with it, so best it today you deposit 3 lakhs with the court / authority and ask them to take decision to disburse to right heir.
That faculty during training also mentioned one real incident of funny case of one employee who after his death had 3 women (with whom he had earlier married, affairs etc ) and some 5 children and the court had to give them share and pension also they got, all children were given pension till age of some 18 or 25 yrs , it was some rare case of olden times, and nowadays everyone makes sure nominations etc are made perfect..
Also during joining if you have his / her personal file you can look for family details, and get information from his colleagues, usually depending on nature of employee you can be sure that gratuity to be given to wife, else if wife is not there then kids.
Because if you can take decision lots of things can be avoided and also we should understnd one family is in sorrow ,,
after my father expired our house property was in his name and in house property there is no nomination facility then when we went to registrar office to get it transferred to our name he told u get succession certificate from court, also approached one lawyer he told that it will take some 4-5 months we have to put some notice in papers and ask if anyone objection please come, etc, we thought since we were out of state people someone might cause problem, but we were living in aurangabad since 20+ years so caught of one person living in our locality retired from registrar office and changed name by just giving affidavit that we are legal heirs to this property and bribe, now name changed also and we also sold property successfully more than 2 yrs ago,, so indian laws are too complex,,