Mustafa Umar – Inheritance in Islam
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The speakers emphasize the importance of inheritance and the need for it in every Muslim's desire to distribute their wealth. They stress the importance of legal and litigation procedures for individuals to inherit and their children to be named after the person they are inheriting. The importance of understanding rules and boundaries in Islam, including privacy and gifts, is emphasized. The live stream will expire soon and the speaker will stay until midnight.
AI: Summary ©
So,
we're gonna get started,
despite
more budget cuts that just happened, actually. So,
don't worry, everything's gonna be fine.
Let's get started.
Welcome to our program about Islamic inheritance.
So, today we're gonna be talking,
about
the verses in the Quran,
as well as generally what the religion of
Islam teaches about inheritance. Now inheritance
refers to what happens to a person's wealth
and all of their belongings when they die
and when they pass away. So what we're
gonna do is, we're going to look
at the verses of the Quran which talk
about inheritance, and there's only a few of
them. And we're gonna kind of extract certain
principles
and then go over some scenarios
on how we're gonna deal with this, with
with the topic of inheritance.
So I wanna achieve 2 things by doing
it this way. I teach a 5 hour
class,
on inheritance.
This is gonna be a condensed 1 hour
short version of that class,
but I wanna do 2 things. 1,
is we wanna learn
the basics of inheritance in Islam, and the
second thing we wanna do
is we wanna learn how to go through
the Quran,
read the verses of the Quran, and kind
of read in some more
depth
of meaning inside the verses, so that we
can have an understanding of how to interpret
the Quran. So I could just give you
the rules of inheritance
and not mention any verses, but what I'm
gonna do is I'm gonna combine the verses
of the Quran, because these ones are a
little bit more complex,
and then we're gonna combine that with extracting
the principles of Islamic inheritance on this topic.
Okay. Does that sound good?
Excellent. Very good. So let's begin. So what
I've done is I have put all of
these verses,
into the slideshow.
Unfortunately,
the
PowerPoint
on a PC
is very different than a PowerPoint on a
Mac. So as you can see, the Arabic
is completely
messed up,
and it has just destroyed everything completely.
So I'm gonna go ahead and read the
verse to you,
and if you want
Yeah. You're not gonna see it from my
laptop. But, unfortunately, like I said, we had
some budget cuts.
We could not get the other computer to
work for some reason,
so just follow along with me. The translation
part is gonna be clear. K?
So, the first verse
of,
inheritance, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in Suratul
Nisa'
which is chapter 4 of the Quran.
This is the verse that is titled about
women. It talks about inheritance.
Primarily the verses on inheritance are in this
surah.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
after 'aazubillah minashaytaanurajeem,
lirijalin
nasibu mimma turakalwalidani
walaqaraboon.
He says that for males
is the share out of what parents and
family leave behind.
And then he says,
And for females
is the share of what parents and family
leave behind.
Whether it is little
or much. So it doesn't matter if the
wealth that you leave behind is a little
bit or it's a lot, The amount doesn't
matter. It has to be distributed in a
specific way. And then it says, a
a share
ordained
by
god.
Okay. Thank you.
Jamal, by the way, is there a way
to kind of adjust the microphone? Is it
sounding a little weird in here?
Yeah.
It's sounding weird for me, so I don't
know. If we could just get No. I
I don't think that's the issue. Is that
the issue?
Can we make it loud and without the
echo? Is that possible?
There's like
a like a annoying echo, not like a
cool echo. If we can get like the
Makkah type echo, that would be cool. I
sound fine? It's only me that's hearing myself
weird?
Okay. You sit here with me, and then
you're gonna see if it's fine. Okay. No.
That's fine. You you everything's fine? Okay. That's
fine. I will I will take I will
sacrifice
the annoyance for everyone else insha'a. Alhamdulillah. I'll
take one for the team. Alright. So,
the verse number is chapter 4 verse 7.
It's in the trend That that That's the
only part that came out on the map
properly. Alright? So,
4 verse 7.
So this is what Allah subhanahu wa'ala is
saying. So when we look at this verse,
what we notice is,
it's saying first of all, males
are gonna get a specific inheritance,
and then it says, and then females are
gonna get a certain inheritance.
Now this is really interesting because if you
think, this is 1400
years ago.
This is a time where the vast majority
of civilizations and religions
excluded women mostly from inheritance.
Now what is Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doing
in the Quran?
He's mentioning male and female and they're both
getting a share and they're both getting their
separate sentences.
Just an entire sentence to repeat that whole
thing was not needed in the Arabic language.
Because in the Arabic language, for those of
you who've taken some Arabic, when you use
the male pronoun,
it automatically includes the females as well. And
there's no need to use a separate, there's
no need to repeat that there's gonna be
women as well,
especially in a verse like this. But not
only that, there's no need to repeat the
entire sentence as a whole. So that in
and of itself
is revolutionary when you look at it. And
in fact, it's interesting there was orientalist scholar,
who
definitely doesn't like Islam. His name was Joseph
Schacht.
If you've heard of him, he's a specialist
in the field of hadith, but this guy,
you know, definitely not pro Islam.
And he says in one of his books
on Islamic law, he says that if you
look at it, we have we have to
admit
that the verses in the Quran about inheritance
and women inheriting and the way that it's
phrased is revolutionary
and no one has ever seen anything like
that in the world prior to that. He
says we have to give them that.
And then the rest of his book is
like against Islam. Right? But but at least
he gave that. Right? So that's It is
truly revolutionary and everyone acknowledges that. And then
Allah subhanahu says,
doesn't matter whether it's a little bit or
a lot. So the principle that we get
here is that
any small amount or any large amount, it
needs to be distributed.
Nothing you can't just say, oh, I only
I don't really have that much money to
give. I hear this a lot from people.
They say, you know, I don't what am
I going to make a will? I have
to distribute my heritage? For what? I don't
have much money, I'm poor. I don't have
much left, you know. I have a lease
on my car and I have like a
few bucks here and there. Allah is saying
in the Quran, it doesn't matter if it's
a lot, it doesn't matter if it's a
little, it needs to be distributed in a
certain way because there are rights
and with rights come responsibilities for the ones
who have to execute those rights.
And then he says,
a
share
ordained.
Now this is a very important term because
the word
comes from a term that many Muslims know
as farr.
Farr means, like you know you have your
fard prayers
and then you have your sunnah prayers.
Farr means mandatory.
It means it's not an option.
It's something that is required. It's something that
is a necessity for Muslims to do.
So,
what we're going to be covering
in this session
is not something that is optional for Muslims
that say, you know, that's really good advice
that Allah is giving. Maybe we should follow
it. Maybe it's a sunnah. Maybe it's recommended.
No. This is a requirement
that has to be done. And if it's
not done, people are gonna be held responsible
for it, and the word that's being used
is
So it's a requirement.
So now before I move on
to the next slide,
there's a a few things I wanna discuss.
So this kind of sets the framework
for inheritance.
So what does it mean? What does inheritance
mean? And why is there a law of
inheritance?
Well, basically what's happening is when a person
dies,
all of their belongings
don't belong to them anymore,
and they have to be distributed, they have
to go somewhere.
And when they die,
the stuff that they own or the stuff
that they possess, it's called their estate. All
of their belongings
together combined.
And this is gonna be distributed
to specific people.
Now there are specific rules which we're gonna
be covering,
but
the reason why these rules exist before we
even get into the details
is that it reminds a Muslim
that they are not
in absolute control
of their wealth to distribute the way that
they want to. And this is, very different
from a lot of people's perception.
Because people's perception is when you write a
will, you decide who's gonna get what. So
I'm gonna give this one child, you know
that child got straight a's in school,
I'm gonna give him 25%.
And that daughter, you know, she wasn't listening
to me, she married that guy that I
didn't want her to marry, I'm gonna give
her 5%.
And,
that other, you know, my brother,
my brother always had my back. I'm gonna
give him 25%
too. This doesn't work in Islam.
You don't have the option to distribute your
wealth however you want to, but instead there
are fixed shares that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
has fixed in the Quran.
And this kind of is a reminder that
it's not up to us. This is a
test of obedience to Allah and to trust
that Allah knows better how this should be
divided.
So that's the first thing. The second thing
is that
once we learn these rules,
it is essential that every single Muslim who
has any money to leave, whether it's a
little bit or it's a lot, they have
to make sure that their inheritance and their
estate is going to be divided
according to these rules.
Now, if you live in a country like
America,
or you live in many other countries of
the world where Islamic law is not the
default
Right? Or in fact, it may not even
be allowed. You have 33 states with anti
Sharia bills. Right?
But you have to set up
a system such that
this will actually go into effect.
And in order for that to happen,
you need to either 1, write a will,
or 2, you need to make a trust.
And we're gonna talk about these things a
little bit more. Right? And these are the
2 main ways for it to take place.
That means that if you don't have one
of these two things
and you have even a $100, even if
you have $10
and you die, and you pass away,
and your money is not going to get
distributed according to the way that Allah is
teaching us in the Quran, it means that
you're gonna be held accountable
in front of Allah on the day of
judgment because you did not take any
precautions or any measures to make sure that
this gets implemented.
And so a lot of people, what they'll
do is when they when they go for
Hajj, they're planning to go and make the
pilgrimage to Makkah, they'll say, you know, now
it's time to write a will.
Now, this is not the way that it
works, actually. You're supposed to have a You're
supposed to have a will whenever you have
something to leave behind. The reason why people
do that when they're about to go for
pilgrimage, do you know why that is?
Does anyone know?
Because you're afraid you might die.
Right? But if you before you go for
pilgrimage,
if you go to visit the pyramids in
Egypt, or if you go to France on
a vacation,
you also might die.
In fact, you don't have to travel. You
might be on the freeway, and you could
die.
So, this idea of connecting
like one specific event with making a will,
it's incorrect perception that people have. The will
is supposed to be made when you have
something to leave. In fact, it's so important
that the Prophet peace be upon him said
in a hadith narrated in Sahih al Bukhari,
he said, it is not befitting for a
Muslim who has something to make a will
of, to remain for 2 nights without having
one's last will and testament written and kept
ready with with 1, meaning keep you keep
it ready. So not only should you have
a will or trust,
but you should be able to have access.
If you die and you put your will
inside your safe, and nobody knows that it's
in a safe, and nobody knows the combination,
no one can find your will, it's not
gonna get executed properly. There's gonna be issues.
Right? So you have to make sure that
it's your responsibility
by living in a country or in a
region that's not automatically gonna distribute things for
you. It's your personal responsibility
to make sure that this ends up happening.
And then the next thing is that in
order for someone to inherit,
they you know,
1, you have to
be pronounced
legally dead
before your assets are gonna be distributed. So
no money transfers until you actually die. Now,
how does someone die?
There's real death and then there's legal death.
So like, so in the past, people used
to, you know, go
travel somewhere and then the person is missing.
And if they're missing for a long period
of time,
they can be after a while, they could
be pronounced legally dead. We don't know where
this person is. Their family is left behind.
They disappeared somewhere. They could be sitting in
a prison. They could have disappeared. They could
have died. Maybe they're alive. Maybe they'll show
up 10 years later. All of a sudden,
they come back 10 years afterwards.
So if they're pronounced legally dead
or if they actually die, right, brain death
versus cardiac death is cardiac death, like actually
die, then in that case, the money is
going to be distributed to the to the
heirs.
In order for the heir, the person who's
gonna be inheriting is called the heir. In
order for an heir to inherit, they must
be alive for at least a moment after
the person that they're gonna be inheriting from
had died.
So for example,
if there is
a car accident, right, there's a car crash,
and there's 2 people in the car and
their family members, and one is gonna inherit
from the other one. And one of them
is pronounced dead at the scene. The other
one ends up in the hospital but is
still alive. And one is gonna inherit from
the one that died because one died and
one is still alive, but then that person
dies in the hospital,
3 hours later.
K? That is sufficient in Islam for that
person to inherit from the other person, because
they were alive for a moment, and we
have proof of that. If they both died
in the car accident and they died at
the same time, and we cannot determine who
died first, we just kind of assume we
don't know which one died first,
They do not inherit from each other,
and then the rest of their heirs are
going to be getting it. So even if
someone died 3 hours later or 1 hour
later after the other person, and then that
person died,
this person's money share will transfer to this
person, then this person's rest of their money
is gonna transfer to the rest of their
heirs. K, so they have to be alive
for at least a little bit of time
after the other person.
There's one exclusion principle for someone who can
inherit, and this is the The Prophet, peace
be upon him, made this rule, and he
clarified this rule. He says that if someone
participates in the murder of another person, they
will not inherit from the person that they
killed. Alright. This is a really important rule
because you find some people,
they try to
expedite
getting their inheritance by killing off a family
member.
Right? And then, you know, that that's a
huge problem. So that'll just incentivize
these type of killings. So in order to
prevent these type of killings,
a person is going to be excluded if
they played a part in the killing or
in the murder of the person who they
were going to be inheriting from. And the
last thing is the property
that you're going to pass off
when you when you pass away, it
needs to be clearly defined
who this property owns belongs to. Who actually
owns this property?
So one of the challenges of today is
ownership is very different than it used to
be.
So today, when we own something,
you can own the thing entirely, or you
can own it 50 50, or you could
have like let's say you have 4 brothers,
each of you own a home, and you
each own 25% of that home. Alright? Or
oftentimes spouses, they own something and they they
own it jointly.
But there's other causes that exist within that
ownership. So what ends up happening for example,
is that people may have a type of
ownership, they have joint ownership
with the right of survival.
Or they may What that basically means is,
okay, we're
we're owning this house
together at the same time,
and different states have different laws and different
countries have different laws, But we don't have
like some kind of fixed percentage of ownership.
It's considered a certain type of joint ownership.
And then when one of those people dies,
the other person gets 100% ownership
of that
item or that commodity or whatever it may
be, a house or a car or a
business or whatever it may be. So what
ends up happening is sometimes you don't have
a clear cut
definition
of who owns what in any particular
asset,
and that becomes challenging. So what needs to
be done is that the ownership
of things needs to be very clearly defined
from a legal perspective
and from an Islamic perspective in order for
inheritance
law to function
correctly and function properly. Okay? So that's just
the introduction to the first verse. Let's move
on to the next verse, and I'll take
questions at the end. Then Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala says, yussikumullahahu
fee olladikum
lizakari
mithluhagilunthayain.
This is chapter 4 verse,
11.
He says
Yeah. God,
God commands you,
in the matter in the in the concerning
your children
that for the males is the equivalent of
the portion
of 2 females.
K. Now this is the verse that comes.
Now when people read this oftentimes, they they
feel like a discomfort. If you grow up
in the age of everything must be equal
and everything must be the same and everything
should be, you know, split across the board,
it can be challenging. So, I wanna point
out 2 things here.
First of all,
that
when you try to understand Islamic
the Islamic inheritance system,
you have to look at these rules or
these laws in the entire framework of Islam.
So in the entire framework of Islam,
the man is responsible for the financial
well-being and for taking care of all the
expenses of the household.
The woman is not responsible for that.
So the reason why
a son is getting a greater share than
a daughter
is because
the financial burden and responsibility on him is
gonna be significantly greater
than on the daughter when she grows up.
So that's why there's a difference or there's
discrepancy
particularly when it comes to son when it
comes to brother and sisters, when it comes
to sons and daughters, when it comes to
husbands and wives.
But it's also important to keep in mind
that people will take this rule and they
will generalize.
And they'll say, Oh, well Well, basically Islam
says that women are always gonna get less
than men.
And that's an incorrect statement. It's not an
accurate statement at all. So let me give
you a simple example. Somebody dies.
I won't write it right now, but I'll
come back to this example. Somebody dies.
They leave behind a husband,
a father,
and a daughter.
Husband,
father, daughter.
How many males are there?
2. How many females are there? 1.
Husband, father, daughter. I heard 2.
2 and 2. 2 and 2? Some of
the Husband,
father,
and 1 daughter.
Where's 2 females?
Yeah. I'm I'm
Well, she's dead. She died. She died. Yeah.
You got me confused. I'm like, what? Did
I did I mess up this presentation already?
Okay. So we got 2 males and 1
female. Right? Okay. So we got husband, father
and daughter. K? How much does the husband
get? Does anyone know?
Oh, you're gonna know by the end of
this session. Shal.
Husband gets 1 fourth.
Okay? Alright. How much does the father get?
1 fourth. How much does the daughter get?
Half.
So the daughter
is getting double
of the male of 1 male and double
of the other male. So the female is
getting double
of both males in this scenario. And there's
100 or 1000 of scenarios like this. So
it's it's incorrect to say that the women
are always getting less. That's not the case
at all, if we understand the Islamic inheritance
law correctly.
Only when they're at the same level
of, you know, son and daughter, brother and
sister, things like that, they're gonna be getting
a short a shorter share. And the reason
behind that, if we just think about it,
is because the economic responsibility
on one is different from the economic responsibility
on the other. So it's important to keep
that, in mind. Okay? So let me give
you one example of this. K? If somebody
dies, we're just gonna apply this rule. This
is pretty simple. Somebody dies and they leave
behind only 1 son and 1 daughter.
And we're applying this rule that you're saying,
the male gets the equivalent of the portion
of 2 females.
How many shares do we How many people
have, how many people are,
how many shares do we need? 2 people
remain. How many shares do we need to
divide the the pie into?
3. 3. Correct.
So how much does the son get? 2.
Two shares, which becomes
2 thirds.
And the daughter gets 1 third. So if
they have a $100,000,
you split it up 1 third and 2
thirds of the $100,000.
Okay? That's the simplest example
you're following so far. Let's move to the
next verse.
Then Allah says,
If there are more than 2 females,
meaning that there's no males there, then for
them is 2 thirds of the inheritance.
So if you got 2 daughters, for example,
or 2 sisters, something like that, they're gonna
get 2 thirds of the entire piece of
the pie.
And if there is only 1,
she's gonna get half.
K. So I'm gonna start writing some of
these fractions down on the board because we're
gonna start doing some calculations very soon.
So what we got so far is
Yeah, I knew that would happen. Alright. So
again, I told you these budget cuts are
not helping.
So
You know, the secured Oh, there we go.
That's all that was needed to be done.
Alright. So what we got here so far
is son,
daughter
Can't even spell daughter.
Yeah. Yeah. I I I'm getting there.
I'm still thinking about the bajjikas.
Daughter. So the first rule is we got
1 to 2.
So that's rule number 1.
Rule number 2
is we got
a daughter
Daughter gets half.
Right?
2 daughters
get what do they get?
2 thirds.
Okay.
So so far so good. Alright?
So these are the rules that we have
so far. Now let's take, an example.
Yeah.
Yeah. No. You're right. 22 to 1. Thank
you.
Yeah.
Is that good?
It's better? Okay. 2 to 1.
Okay. So we got 2 rules here.
So let's take a scenario. I have some
practice scenarios here.
So we got a daughter
and let's say Okay. Let's say a person
dies.
The d means the deceased person.
The person dies and they leave behind
1 daughter
and one nephew.
Okay?
How much a daughter gets?
Half.
Where does the rest of the money go?
They go to the daughter?
Okay.
So here's the rule, the Prophet peace be
upon him he said, this is a hadith
in Bukhari in Muslim, to give the shares
of inheritance to those who are entitled to
them. So the fixed shares that are there,
we did that. And whatever is left
goes to the closest male relative.
So the closest male relative, there's no father
here, there's no son here, there's no brother
here, there's no uncle here, we got the
nephew.
So the nephew gets the remainder,
which is how much? Half. Half. So
that one's simple.
So that's good. Let's take another scenario.
Person dies,
they leave behind 2 daughters
and 2 uncles.
Okay?
How much did 2 daughters get?
2 thirds.
Who gets the rest?
How much? Who?
The 2 uncles get the rest. How much
do they get?
1 third. So how much do they get
each?
Each they get 1 sixth
each.
Okay?
And you figure out how much the person
had left, and this is what you get.
K. So so far so good. These are
the simple examples.
Alright. Let's move on.
So now we
are on, which slide are we on? Slide
5. Let's move on.
I'll take the questions a little bit later.
Is it directly related to this?
Okay. Go ahead then.
If there's nobody else in the family, she'll
get the rest.
If there's nobody else, yeah. There's nobody else
to inherit.
Because it's only saying half, so I'm wondering
where's the So in this scenario, there's a
nephew.
So the nephew gets the other half.
Yeah. You get that? So Yeah. So the
He's the closest remaining male relative. Okay? Look
up.
Yeah.
We're coming. We're Okay.
Okay.
Okay. So
Got it. So here's the way it works.
So that's a good question.
So the thing is, the person who died,
the deceased,
only their property is being distributed, because they're
the only ones that died.
So if they don't own
a certain
Let's say,
the deceased died, this person died and this
was, let's say, let's say this was a
a the the father of this daughter,
and then there was the wife.
Well, she would be in this scenario, but
someone else. Right? They own property with them,
but they don't own any other property. Their
property doesn't get distributed.
So your question about what if they don't
have ownership in some
How can ownership belong to a deceased mother?
If she's dead, she can't own something.
But once she died
I'm not following. You get it? Okay.
Okay.
I see. Okay. Okay. I got it. I
got it. So so the thing, if somebody
inherits wealth from someone else, it doesn't matter
where it's coming from. Now it completely belongs
to this person. It's in their ownership. It
doesn't matter where it came from as long
as it's legitimate transfer, it's not a drug
dealer or something like that.
Right? So now it belongs to this person,
doesn't matter where it's coming from. Now whatever
this person owns, however they're getting all their
money from inheriting from family members, this family
members, but you know wife's side of the
family,
All of the things that they belong to
them, it's gonna go to who now is
directly connected with them because that's who their
family is. So it doesn't matter what channel
the money is coming through.
Does that
answer that?
Yeah.
Okay.
Inshallah. We'll get we'll yeah. Inshallah. We'll get
to it.
Yeah. So so here's what I mean. So
when this person died, okay,
do we know if it's a man or
woman?
Because I just said the person has a
daughter. Okay? I haven't even told you who
it is. Right? It has a daughter, has
a nephew. If it was a man,
if he had a wife, she already died.
If it was a wife and she had
a husband, he already died too. That's why
they're not mentioned here. If they were mentioned,
then they would be alive.
If they're alive,
then we're gonna cover it in the next
two slides, which is what we're getting to.
Right now, they're all dead. Alright? All are
dead.
Alright.
Coming, inshaAllah. Coming soon.
Okay. So now let's look at the next
scenario. Okay. We're not done. This is all
one verse in the Quran. We're still on
this verse. Alright. Then Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
says,
Says, as for the parents
of the deceased,
for each of the 2 is 1 6th
of the inheritance
in case of his having left a child.
So it's saying
that the parents get
1 6th
if. If what?
What's the what's the if scenario?
If they left a child.
Okay?
So, mom
and dad, parents.
What are they getting?
1 6th
if
there's a child.
Okay?
So let's keep reading.
And Allah subhanahu wa sallam
And if they have a
Wait. Where did he go? But if he
has left no children and his parents are
his only heirs, then for his mother is
1 third.
So the scenario here is
that the mom
the mom gets this is another rule, kind
of a sub rule. The mom gets 1
third.
In which scenario?
No child.
Okay?
But we're not done yet.
And then it says,
Okay. So he says if,
where is the translation?
If he has a surviving mother and together
with or without sisters,
2 or more surviving brothers, then for his
mother is 1 6th. So if there are
2 or more brothers
we haven't even covered brothers in detail, but
if you got 2 plus brothers,
what happens to the mom share?
1 6th.
Okay? So kind of like this. So basically,
you have if there's a child or if
there's 2 or more brothers or sisters, you
get back to mom goes back to 1
sixth.
If there's no kids,
mom is extra happy in one way. Right?
She's gonna be happy with kids. If she's
not doesn't have kids, she's gonna be happy
she gets extra inheritance.
Right? So she's gonna get 1 third.
Now continuing on with this same verse.
It says,
Okay. Let me
let me break this down with some scenarios
here. Okay. So now what's happening is mom
is getting 1 third or 1 sixth, and
dad
is getting
what is dad getting?
1 sixth. But dad is also
in another category.
And what's that category that we mentioned?
Nearest male.
Okay?
So the nearest surviving male Dad can become
the nearest surviving male. And if he does,
then he also gets the remainder.
The remainder that we were looking at. So
let's take
a scenario
of this.
Let's see. Okay. Let's take somebody dies.
This is the deceased person.
They just died,
and they left,
dad, mom,
and a daughter.
Dad, mom and a daughter. How could you
leave your dad alive?
Depends on your family relationship, right?
So look, so this is if somebody dies,
can their mom and dad still be alive?
Of course.
Right? Can their daughter still be alive?
No problem. Right? So now what's gonna happen?
So we're gonna look first thing we do,
start with the daughter because she's easy. Right?
She's easy because she's either what?
She's either half or she's 1 2 thirds.
In this case,
she's half. Okay? So we give the daughter
1 half. Okay?
Now, we go to mom.
Is there a child?
There's a child. The daughter.
So what does mom get? 6th.
1 6th.
Okay?
What does dad get?
One sixth because there's a child, plus
who gets the rest?
The dad.
Okay.
So we got 1 half plus 1 sixth.
What is the remainder that the dad is
gonna get? Well, I'm gonna do this for
you because I know some people forgot the
fraction math. So, we gotta put this over
the same common denominator,
so 1 half, you multiply
by 3 over 3,
and what do you
get?
2 times 3,
6.
1 times 3, 3. So you have 3
6ths
plus
1 6th for the mom, so you have
4 6ths.
What is the remainder?
So 6 over 6
minus 4 over 6 equals 2 over 6.
Reduce it, and what do you get? 1
third. 1 third. So what does dad get?
1 third.
That's the whole thing. Okay?
So this is how it ends up breaking
down. So we just saw the rule, we
saw the rule, we added it to our
arsenal of rules and everything, and it breaks
down to
this fraction. Okay?
Let's take another scenario.
Can I erase this?
No.
Does not matter if it's minor,
married, none of this matters. None of this
is significant.
So, okay. So good question. So, I'm gonna
throw out one more rule which we're not
gonna be covering in detail.
And that is,
that brothers
and sisters
are blocked
by
son
and
dad.
So if there were brothers and sisters, what
happened to the brothers and sisters?
Dad blocked them. They get nothing.
Okay?
Yes.
He's gonna get the remainder.
He's gonna end up getting the remainder.
So what's the fixed
One 6th plus the remainder.
1 6 if there's a
child. What if there's a child? You're just
gonna get the remainder,
which is a very big share anyways.
Yeah. So he's gonna be fine. Right? So
in this case, he's doing So if you
if you took out if you took out
the daughter,
dad's doing well, economically.
I'm just saying from that perspective. Right? So
he's gonna be making a lot more. So
it's gonna work out well for him, that's
why he didn't need a separate chair.
So that's kind of the way it works.
Alright. Let's take another example.
How much time do we have? I don't
wanna overdo.
Oh, well. SubhanAllah. Okay. Time is flying. So
should we do no. I think we're done.
So let's just move on because we got
a lot more to cover. Alright. So moving
on, let's move to the next,
rule here.
It says,
It's all the same verse by the way.
It's after
after deduction for any bequest
that he may have made and any debt.
So it's saying bequest
and debt.
So what is this verse talking about? This
whole verse is saying,
these are the rules to distribute your inheritance,
and it breaks down some of them. And
it says, only after
the wasiyyah,
the bequest
has been distributed
or a debt has been done.
So now this is very important. This there
are certain,
rules or priorities that you have to follow.
So priority number 1, when a person dies
with their wealth, the number one priority is
that their funeral expenses get paid from their
own estate.
K? So when they die, if they left
behind,
$12,000
and burial preparation
and burial costs in Orange County
end up being very expensive and it turns
out to be $9,000 for the entire burial
and everything.
That has to be taken from their estate.
So their heirs are all gonna be left
with how much money?
3,000 split between them. K? So that is
a requirement that's gonna be taken out from
people. So which is also why, you know,
you wanna make sure that when you die,
if you don't already have your burial plot,
you wanna leave something behind so other people
don't have to be paying for your burial.
So that's important.
So that's the first priority, number 1. Then
you have debts. You owe other people money.
So the question is,
do
you have to pay off your debts before
your funeral expenses or your funeral expenses before
your debts? So here's the order. Funeral comes
first because you gotta be buried.
Then the people who you owe money to,
they're gonna go ahead and get the money.
And then after that, the bequest that you
have made is gonna be distributed. So you're
thinking, what the heck is a bequest? So
what a bequest basically
is, is that's the part of the will
where you get to leave
whatever you want to whoever you want
with some restrictions.
So the bequest
is where you get the flexibility
to
kind of divide your wealth
the way you want.
Okay? So it's almost like your prayer. In
prayer, you have to recite surahfatihai
in the beginning,
and then you get to choose which surah
you wanna do afterwards. Right? So you got
some parts that are fixed, some parts where
you get to choose, something similar like that.
So the bequest
is,
it's called wasiyyah,
where you write and you say, I would
like to leave
10%
of my property
to,
the orphans
in Palestine,
and I wanna give it to this charity.
And this is, you know, this money is
gonna be distributed. So that will see you
that bequest has to be distributed
before your heirs will actually get their money
because that 10% first gets deducted from your
estate. And then once it's deducted, then the
rest of it's gonna be split according to
these fractions.
So first comes the burial expense, second comes
the debts, and if you have collateral that
you had in your possession or something, you
have to return it. And then the third
is gonna be distribution of this bequest that
you have. Now there are a few rules
when it comes to the bequest that have
been explained by the prophet, peace be upon
him, clearly in the hadith. And we're, you
know, we'll go over a little bit of
of those. So
among those rules, number 1 is that the
bequest
has a maximum
of 1 third.
You cannot donate, you cannot bequest more than
1 third of your wealth. And the reason
why is because if you said, I wanna
give 90% of all my wealth to the
orphans in some charity or something like that,
how how much money you gonna have left
for your heirs? You've potentially excluded your heirs
from all of this other money, and you're
not supposed to do that because you're not
supposed to go up to a high limit
like that. So that's rule number 1. I'm
I'm coming Rule number 1. Rule number 2.
K? You cannot
write a bequest to someone who's already gonna
be inheriting.
So you cannot say, well, I want my
son to get 10%. Your son's already part
of the inheritance. I want my mom to
get 15%
but she's already part of the inheritance. So
if you were allowed to give someone who
already inherits a bequest,
then you'd be overriding the rules that Allah
subhanahu put. There's no point of Him putting
rules if you're gonna get to override it
anyways.
The only
time where you can make a bequest
of someone who is gonna be an heir
is if they end up being blocked. So
if they're gonna get blocked like in this
scenario, we just talked about brothers, right? And
brothers get blocked by who?
Father and son. Right? They're gonna be blocked.
So in that case, you can leave something
to them. Even though they're heirs, they're gonna
be blocked. If they get blocked, you can
make the
bequest to the wasiyyah
to these people as well.
You can make a conditional bequest as well.
So if for example you write You say,
you know what? You tell your brother,
you know, who's gonna be blocked anyways. You
think You know that they're gonna be blocked
if they If this person, the father or
the son remains alive. You say, you know
what? If you
graduate
from California Islamic University, I will give you
10% of my wealth. It's a good option.
Right?
You can do that.
Right? So you can make a conditional bequest,
and it'll only be effective if they meet
the condition that you have. So whatever condition
you put in there, you could do that.
K? And you can give bequest to anyone.
You can even give a bequest to a
non Muslim. Alright? So if, you know, if
you wanted to leave money to
someone who is not a Muslim or you
had non Muslim family members for example,
according to the majority of scholars,
Muslims don't inherit from non Muslims and vice
versa. That's the general rule.
According to Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah Sheikh Ibn Khayyim,
they said there's an exception to that. We're
not gonna get into those details,
but
if you have a non Muslim family member
and
you want to leave something behind for them,
you could leave that in the bequest.
Up to a maximum of what?
1 third. Okay? Maximum of 1 third.
If they were gonna be blocked
yes. So if the grandchildren were gonna be
blocked, you could bequest to them. Yes. Alright.
So now when you are also making the
bequest, you wanna put some other things in
that aspect as well. So you wanna
also identify
who is going to supervise my burial,
who is going to execute my will, who's
gonna be, you know, maintaining, who's gonna be
in charge
of all of that? You also want to
put in there,
what is what do what would I like
to happen for the custody of custody of
my children? Even though a judge can overrule
that, you could potentially put that in there.
Or I want my children when I die,
I want them to
enroll in California Islamic University. I want them
to finish that program.
Someone better make sure this happens. This is
my last request, right, that I have or
something along those lines. She put all of
that in the bequest. Okay. So that is
the bequest which is executed before the rest
of the division of that. And there's like
a 100 more rules on the bequest, but
that's just overview. Okay? Let's move on to
the next verse.
And then it says,
Your parents and your children,
you don't know which one of them is
nearer to you, in bringing you benefit.
You don't know which one is gonna be
more beneficial in your life. So what is
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala saying here? He's basically
saying,
that all of these shares and this whole
system has been fixed for you for a
reason.
Because you may be emotionally inclined towards certain
family members and say, That person helped me
and I don't like that person or, you
know, That person wasn't listening to me or
something like that. And Allah is reminding you
that you don't know who's really supposed to
give you the most benefit in your life.
And also,
this makes it clear that the shares are
fixed from Allah so that other family members
don't end up feeling excluded.
Because because imagine what would happen if you
keep distributing. You're like, you know, this son's
in, this son's out, this father's in, this
brother's out, this brother's in, sister's out.
They're gonna hate you.
You're gonna cause a lot of family divisions.
But when they know that this is the
rule, this is the system,
now you block all of those,
emotional problems and family problems, animosity between family
members. So Allah says,
This is an ordinance from God for two
reasons. Again, clarifying that it's mandatory,
and 2, that Allah knows better
about how He has designed the family system
and who is supposed to be helping who.
K? And then he says,
That Allah
is the all knowing and the all wise,
because He instituted this system. Now there's gonna
be exceptional cases where you got a problem
with your son, or you got a problem
with your brother, or your daughter is not
listening to you, or
your wife, or whoever it is. And you
think, You know what? I should be allowed
to somehow exclude them or disinherit them or
something like that. In Islam, you can't do
that. You cannot disinherit people
for any of these reasons. You say, yeah,
but that son, you know, he's gonna,
you know If if he inherits that money,
he's gonna just buy Lamborghini the next day
after I die.
That's not your your issue. Right? You when
you die,
that wealth was supposed to be distributed. Now
if you distributed your wealth before you passed
away,
then you have
some more,
you know, flexibility in how you wanna distribute.
Okay? Depending on who's obedient, who's disobedient. But
once you die, the rules of inheritance
are directly enacted, and you have to follow
that according to that. You can't disinherit. Like
in America, you can disinherit anyone you want,
except one state. There's only one state where
you can't disinherit your children.
Does anyone know what state that is? My
two lawyers?
Louisiana.
Because they use the Napoleonic laws that have
been coming from past French, so that's the
only one with the exception.
Anyways, that's American law. So anyways,
so, this is Allah subhanahu wa'anhu reminding us
and saying, you know, Allah knows better regarding
these rules.
Then that verse
is the same one that we've been covering.
This is all part of 11. Yeah. So
then we move to 412.
Okay? It says,
And for you is half of what your
wives leave behind. So not speaking to men
here. You get half of what your life
wives leave behind if they have no children,
but if they have a child, you get
1 fourth of what they leave behind after
the deduction of any bequest that they've made
and any debt. So now we got another
rule. Let's remove this.
What does a husband get?
Husband.
Husband gets half
or
if there if there's no child. And if
there's a child,
if
child.
Okay? And then I'll just take
the next verse as well here. And then
it says,
And for them is 1 fourth of what
you leave behind if you have no children,
but if you have a child, then they
shall have 1 eighth of what you leave
behind after deduction for any bequest you may
have made and any debt incurred. So now
you have wife.
K?
Wife is basically
1 fourth or 1 eighth if there's a
child.
If child.
Now let's take a scenario here.
I have a scenario here.
Well, I have a comment here. So spouses
technically are being included in inheritance
even though
spouses are not from your blood.
So they're not technically part of your family.
So why did Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala include
them, if technically
they can be separated? They're not like permanent
permanent family members.
Because it's showing you the sanctity of the
marriage contract. And shows you what, you know,
how important and significant marriage is viewed in
Islam.
Another quick comment here is,
today,
in western society,
almost everything goes to the spouse.
Husband dies,
wife gets almost everything. Wife dies, husband gets
almost everything.
This is one type of system that exist
today, but from an Islamic perspective, this is
viewed as an extreme system.
In the past, it used to be the
opposite system where generally, you know, women were
being excluded,
wives in particular were being excluded from inheritance,
spouses were excluded from inheritance. So what ends
up happening is we end up going from
one extreme to another extreme.
In Islam, we look at these rules and
we say, Hey, wait a minute.
Your If you follow that, what we have
today, what about your mom? What about your
dad? What about your children? They don't have
any right to that? So Islam views family
not just as a relationship between 2 people,
but it views family in a more holistic
fashion. So all of this is based on
number 1, the way in which family is
perceived
in Islam, and number 2, the way in
which responsibilities
are actually divided,
among the family in the Islamic system. So
let's look at some examples here.
We got a husband,
a dad
and a daughter. Okay? So somebody dies,
left behind
husband,
dad,
father, but this is less letters, and a
daughter.
Okay.
So now, first of all, what gender is
the deceased?
Hamdulillah. Good. Female. Okay.
This is Islam, assuming.
Okay. So,
you got a husband. So,
what Let's start with the daughter. Right? Because
the daughter We got this rule up here.
What is the daughter getting?
Potentially half or 2 thirds? Because there's one
getting 1 half.
What? Let's move to the husband. What is
the husband getting? You go with the person
who has the fixed shares first, it's easier.
What is the husband getting?
Is there a child? Yes. Therefore, 1 fourth.
Husband gets? 1 fourth.
What is the dad getting? Reminder. The remainder.
What is the remainder? 1 4th. 1 4th.
Okay? I want you the algebra now. Okay.
One fourth. Okay. So that one's done.
Yes.
Correct.
So, the money will go So, if they're
minor and they die,
and the money is going to them, it's
the same way as if they would get
money in any any other way. Like grandparents
give money, parents give money, transfer money in
their name. The money belongs to them, but
they will have a custodian over that money.
That's it. Okay? So that's one scenario. Let's
take one more scenario.
I'm gonna take a tough scenario, and then
I'll skip all the other scenarios, I'll go
to the tough one. Okay? So we got
a husband,
just for the sake of time. This is
very tough writing.
Okay.
We got husband,
dad, and 2 daughters.
Dad,
2
daughters.
So it's very similar to this one except
you got 2 daughters.
So let's see if we can figure it
out. What do daughters get?
2 daughters, so they get
2 thirds.
What does the husband get?
1 fourth. What does dad get?
The remainder.
What's the remainder?
K. So, let's calculate it. So,
what we got
is,
this is the right scenario. Right?
Yes.
1 12. Okay. So, let's,
we got
1 12th? K. So 1 4th so I'll
show you how to do it. 1 fourth,
over 3. We put it over 12. Right?
So we get 3
over 12.
We got, times 4, we get 8
over,
12.
And what do you end up having? What
is 8 over 12 plus 3 over 12?
What is 8 twelves plus 3 twelves?
11 twelves.
Okay.
So, 11
twelves.
Alright.
And,
what does dad get?
The remainder. Okay. Good.
Let me see one more scenario.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Made a mistake here. Okay.
So, husband is clear 1 fourth.
Two daughters are clear 2 thirds. Alright? But
we messed up on the debt.
What did we do wrong? Is there a
daughter?
There's a daughter, right? There's a child.
What's the dad's rule?
One sixth.
Okay. So the dad's supposed to get 1
sixth
and he would get the remainder. Okay. When
there's a remainder.
Okay. But now, if the dad's getting 1
6th, what's the remainder?
There's not gonna be a remainder. Right? Okay.
So now what's happening here? Now we gonna
we gonna add up here.
Husband is getting we put it all over
12. 3 twelves,
2 daughters are getting 8 twelves. What is
the dad getting? We put this over 12.
2 twelves.
So we got 13
over
12. We got a problem. Okay? So the
thing is, these shares
were designed
to be a proportion,
a ratio.
So what happens is, when you encounter a
scenario like this, it's called,
awl.
Alright.
So now all you gotta do, it's not
difficult, all you gotta do is
you
you're gonna end up reducing the shares of
everyone by making
this over 13. And you just basically make
it into 13 shares. So you have a
pie and you made, you know, 12 shares
or whatever it is. You're gonna redefine this
into make it into 13 slices, and then
you're gonna split it back over. So how
do you do that?
Alright?
2
thirds
times 13? Where?
For the daughters. What about for everyone else?
So, what do we do with these ones?
All we gotta do is just basically these
already have their fractions out. Just put it
over 13.
You're done.
Change the 12 to 13
and you're done. And it splits out, everyone
gets equal reduction across the board. Okay? So
that happens sometimes and sometimes you get vice
versa. So sometimes you'll end up with 7
eights. What do you gotta do? You gotta
redistribute the shares back to other people, so
everyone gets upgraded a few shares because of
that. So there are some scenarios where you
find things like that, insha'Allah. Is this regarding
this?
No. No. We'll come back to the q
and a. I'm almost done.
Alright. I don't wanna take too long. Alright.
So,
we're gonna
I wasn't planning on going through this entire
verse. Let's see. Can you see this verse?
There we go.
Do we do this one? Yeah, we did
this one.
So here's 2 verses about a situation called
kalala. And kalala is basically where somebody dies,
and they don't leave behind parents, and they
don't leave behind children. So what do you
do? There's 2 verses regarding this, and they're
extremely detailed,
and we're not gonna go through them. But,
one of the reasons why I wanted to
cover this is, first of all we we're
gonna see in this verse
different shares. So there are 6 shares that
are fixed in the Quran. There's 1 half,
1 fourth, 1 eighth, 2 thirds, 1 third,
1 sixth. You can see that pretty much
here. Right? So we got how many shares
we got? 1 fourth,
One half?
1 eighth?
K. So what is what is that?
Half of a half is a fourth. Half
of a fourth is an eighth. K? And
then you go start with 2 thirds. What's
half of 2 thirds?
One third.
What's half of 1 third?
One sixth. So the only fixed shares you
got are 6.
2 thirds and a half and a half,
and 1 half and a half and a
half. Easy way to remember it. And the
rest becomes residuary
or the remainder. Remainder we call residuary, the
Baqi.
Alright. So,
these are pretty much the shares that are
mentioned, that are fixed. Now, what's interesting is
sometimes these can get really complex.
But what's really cool is
that the fact that Islam
came up with these rules
actually
was an impetus for the development of algebra.
I'm serious. This is not an exaggeration. So,
I'll tell you exactly what it was. So,
algebra
is an Arabic word in and of itself.
It's coming from the word algebra.
K? Algebra from the word algebra.
One of the founders of algebra, one of
the pioneers was a guy by the name
of Muhammad ibn Musa Al Khwarizmi.
K? Khwarizmi was from a city called Al
Khwarizmi.
And there is something in mathematics that was
named after him. Does anyone remember anything from
math that sounds like Al Khwarizmi?
Algorithm.
Right? So algorithm is named after him. So
he wrote his book, Al,
Haysaab al Jabrwal Muqabala. It's a very, very
famous book on algebra.
And what happens is 1 third
of the longest chapter in his entire book
on algebra is all about Islamic inheritance, because
he's a scholar. He's he's an Islamic scholar
as well as a Muslim scholar, so he
does that.
Then comes another guy, his name was Al
Hasar. He was a mathematician from North Africa,
from the Muhrib region.
He specialized in Islamic jurisprudence and specialized in,
Islamic inheritance in particular during the 12th century.
So he's the guy who developed
the
modern
symbol notation of the horizontal bar. So you
see we're using this bar, 1 over 3
and one over 4 and all that. That
didn't exist until this guy developed it. And
then 100 years later, you have Fibonacci.
Anyone computer science major or engineer,
they know the Fibonacci sequence and all that?
So he came a 100 years later and
he started develop he started using the same
thing that Al Hazar had developed in the
first place. So the bar that we use
for fractions
actually is coming from a specialist in Islamic
inheritance because he said, hey, this helps us
to calculate things in a much easier way.
And the last guy in 15th century,
his name was Abu Hassan ibn Ali al
Qala Sadi.
He was also a specialist in Islamic,
jurisprudence
and in Islamic inheritance.
And he's the first guy who basically developed
the symbols for algebra. You know, the x's
and the y's and all of that stuff.
So this guy developed that. And I find
it really interesting.
He developed it
in Granada,
right outside of Granada. And if you study
Islamic history of Spain,
this is the last city that remained in
Spain when it was being taken over during,
you know, the inquisition and Reconquista
of Spain.
So this guy was living in a fort
while Ferdinand and Isabella
are attacking the last city of the Muslims
in Spain.
And while that's happening,
he develops
the x's and y's for algebra, which became
our modern symbols. So, there's still technological
development going on while they're under attack, and
then he fled back to one of his
other cities. So,
that's a little bit note on that, but
I'm not gonna go into these details.
And then lastly,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, Wasiyatam
min Allah wallahu alimun kaleem So after mentioning
all these rules of inheritance, He says, This
is a commandment from Allah.
The word wasiyyah has two meanings. Wasiyyah means
bequest
when you're making the wasiyyah
and wasiyyah coming from Allah
is that
when you die and you make a bequest,
you're giving instructions that I want some of
my money to be distributed this way.
Allah is using the same word wasiyyah
from Allah.
So this
is to you from Allah that you got
to follow these rules.
And Allah is knowledgeable
and Allah is
all He's merciful. He's patient with people when
they do some when they don't do the
right things.
Okay? Now,
yeah, let me show you some sample wills,
insha'a'Allah.
K. I'm just gonna flip through this real
quick. It looks like this presentation
I'm gonna show you 3 sample wills. So
you should make a will or get a
trust. It costs a little bit more, but
it can save you a lot of money.
And
we have
will.
Okay.
Here is a will
made from Quicken. You've heard of the company
Quicken? So this is Quicken Willmaker Pro. K?
You're gonna go through it. You're gonna sign
your initials, everything.
This is
there's my name, this is my will, personal
information, this is where I reside. You gotta
revoke your previous wills. I'm married to who?
You can't see it.
Oh, yeah.
I'm like, literally Yeah. You cannot see it.
That's right. So that doesn't help, does it?
Alright. So
let me see if this will open.
Can we open the attachment on the Mac?
Yeah. Yeah? It's embedded into the PowerPoint.
Oh, you know, I I put on the
USB. It's fine. I'll just skip this.
No. No. No. I I I put it
here. Just give me the
wheel. Here we go. Now you'll see it.
Alright. This is Quicken.
Quicken WilMaker Pro.
Zoom.
No. I'll tell you exactly how how it's
made. Turn the zoom in here. Here we
go.
Okay. So this is the instructions what you
do.
Going down here, you have your personal information,
revocation of your previous wills. I'm married to
someone. These are my children. This is disposition
of my property. I have calculated my own
inheritance. This is what my wife gets, this
is what my mom gets, this is what
my dad gets, this is what Yusuf, my
son gets, this is what Maryam gets.
So
my wife gets 1 8, my mom gets
1 6, my dad gets 1 6, Yusuf
gets 13 over 36,
Mariam gets 13 over 72.
Calculate that, right? You have an executor.
I chose not to name an executor. I
overrode this will anyways, it's not my real
will.
Payment of debts,
payment of taxes, severability,
and I got my signature. So this is
very, very basic will that was designed from
Quicken Willmaker Pro. Let me show you another
will.
I calculated them myself. I'll show you I'll
show you an app that's coming up. It's
gonna make your life easier. Then you have,
another
service here. Here's another will.
Should be launching.
There.
I forgot where I downloaded this from, but
I have, like, a bunch of them. We
were doing a project at CAU on wheels.
So
blessed with will and testament. So this a
little bit longer. So you got revocation, preamble.
This is your family you put in there,
executors.
Put in your funeral and burial, what you
want. Your directions.
Who you don't want to be at your
funeral, in case you don't want someone to
be there. Alright. I give, devise, and bequeath,
taxes.
Huqququllah, the person put some Arabic terms in
there. Infancy clause,
trustee,
powers,
investment, settling claims, distribution,
income tax,
community property, supreme clause, etcetera, etcetera. K. That's
done. So that's another will. Here's
another sample.
These are just samples. This is from the
my Waseya service, if you use it.
Hopefully, I'm not revealing their
copyrighted secrets or something like that.
So this is me.
Long preamble, details of family, tangible property. So
this is an example where they're gonna put
all the details in. So residuary estate, appointment
of guardian, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, fiduciary powers,
etcetera, etcetera.
Insurance, nominee, administer claims, self dealing, elections, qualified
property, use of income,
sever joint trust, incorporation,
depreciation.
So you can see they can get longer.
Funeral and burial rights, transactions,
miscellaneous provisions.
Here we go. So here, this type of
will breaks out everything. So it says the
son is gonna get such and such thing.
The daughter is gonna get 1 half if
there's this. If there's 2 daughters, they're gonna
get 2 thirds. The father gets 1 6th.
All the rules have been rewritten into this
will
to clarify, Hey, this is gonna be the
case. You got mother, wife, husband, apportioned heir,
grandfather, son's daughter, full sister,
all of the rules. Of course, there are
even exceptions to the rule. So all of
these rules cannot,
actually,
you know, work in all scenarios.
So anyways, you put all those rules in,
paternal uncle son, full uncle son, etcetera etcetera,
going through,
explaining who should take care of things, and
then you sign. So you see, wills can
get complicated. They could be as simple as
one paragraph, and they could be as complicated
as, you know, 26 pages or or longer.
This is from MyWasia. So, Sheikh Joe Bradford,
he launched his website. It's called mywasia.com.
I don't get any commission, although I probably
should.
But, you know, you can you can get
that done,
on on his website.
So here's the thing. So whether or not
it's notarized,
I mean, it's nice, but,
no.
Yeah.
Coming. Coming. Inshallah.
Alright. So that is
the samples, and the last thing I'm gonna
show you
is
this website right here. So there's 2 places
where
this was just exercise for you. So there's
a really good website.
This is one website that I like. You
go here and you could do all the
inheritance calculations, and they'll give you all the
so you don't have to do it yourself.
And then if you know Arabic, this is
the best app that I found on iTunes.
It doesn't exist on Android.
It's like one of the reasons why I
went back to the iPhone even though I
don't really like it.
Al Mawarith. It's one of the best apps
that exists out there,
and it's only on iTunes, and it's in
Arabic only. So I highly highly recommend that.
That's the one that I use when people
ask me questions. Otherwise, you can go to
this one, and then there's a bunch of
other ones as well.
Okay? And,
last lastly,
last two verses of the same verse about
about inheritance.
Let's see. Where were we?
So, conclusion. Allah subhanahu wa'anhu says,
These are the bounds set by Allah,
talking about inheritance.
Hudu doesn't just mean like the punishments in
Islam. These are the bounds and limits set
by Allah. Whoever obeys God and His Messenger
by following them, God will admit him into
gardens through which rivers flow, abiding therein. That
is the supreme triumph.
And then he says,
end of the inheritance,
he says,
But whoever disobeys God and His Messenger and
exceeds his bounds, meaning His limits, the rules
that He has set, God will admit him
into a fire to abide therein, and for
him is a shameful and humiliating punishment. So
don't take these rules lightly. Take these rules
seriously. Make sure that you get something prepared
so that you will
get your,
inheritance distributed correctly. So we have,
some
lawyers in the room. We have other people
who do inheritance as well. We have I
think is the table outside or something like
that? Is there a table outside, Sanah? There
is table outside? Alhamdulillah.
But they asked So whoever emailed us, and
they got something. Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah.
Yes.
Unless you override that.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right. So so
yeah. So this is a very common question.
Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up.
So the so but so this is one
of the concerns that people have. They say,
you know what? So,
father dies or the
husband die a person dies, leaves behind a
wife, and they say, well, all these kids
are gonna be taking some of the share
in the house, and then what's gonna happen
to the woman and all of that? I
mean, if we just zoom in on that
question,
what we're saying is
that your own children and your own family
members are simply gonna just leave the mom
behind.
What
I I got it. I know. I know.
I know. So what that means is but
if we're gonna take that as the default,
what you mean is that's a very dysfunctional
family. And I know we have a lot
of them.
I I I get that.
I I got that. I understand that. But
when we're trying to
practically we'll talk about that in a moment.
We're trying to rationalize and understand
the rules that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has
put for us.
We're assuming
we're not assuming
that dysfunctional
families where everyone is fighting each other is
supposed to be the absolute standard and norm.
Right? That's not that's not supposed to be
the default.
Right? That's supposed to be the exception. Of
course, it happens, but it's not the default.
Right? So when we're trying to understand these
rules and we're trying to understand
why is it that, you know, we we
can't just look at family members as individuals,
right, on one side. Right? So
we just that's that's important thing to keep
in mind. Okay? Now but hear me out.
Hear me out. So
what do we do in a scenario where
we expect that's coming?
You're gonna see this coming a mile away.
Before you die before you die, if you
have a problem where the kids don't even
care about what's gonna happen to the mom,
you can see that usually before they're gonna
you're gonna see it 1 year before, 5
years in advance. So what do you do?
You simply take precautions in advance
to make sure
that that person is gonna be taken care
of. So when you're giving gifts
to certain members of the family, are you
gonna give something to your spouse? Are you
gonna give something to your parents because you
think they're gonna be neglected when you die
as well because they're not they're only let's
say your mom is only getting 1 6th,
you're worried about your mom. You're like, but
she's only gonna get 1 6th. What about
my mom? It's not only spouses.
People's parents get neglected and what happens? The
the parents get thrown into,
into old folks home, right? So what do
you do? It's a simple solution.
You make sure you give them something in
your lifetime before you die.
Go put a property in there. Go give
your mom a house. Go give your dad
a house.
No no. But
but but then that doesn't add up. Right?
So here's the thing, if somebody has money,
and you're saying that it's not fair because
the wife is gonna get stuck with 18,
or the mom is gonna get stuck with
16, or the dad is gonna get stuck
with 16, we should give them more of
the share, why couldn't you give them more
of the share when you are alive?
Whatever money you had, why couldn't you give
them more when you are alive?
That's the question.
You could've,
But I'm telling you from experience, I get
100,
maybe 1,000 of these cases. The reason why
people don't do it is because they want
to hold on to their own wealth
for the duration of their life, and they
don't want to give anything to any of
the family members while they're alive. And then
when they die they say, But Islamic inheritance
is unfair. I want it to be redistributed
some way. Why could why did you have
to hold on to all of your money
when you're alive? You're not willing to give
anything to your mom, to your wife, to
your spouse, to your kids, nothing.
And then when you die, you say, oh,
Islamic rules of inheritance is it doesn't make
sense to me. The society has changed, we
have dysfunctional families, we need to rethink the
entire system. Let's just throw these verses to
the side or reinterpret them and have our
own Martin Luther like, you know, reformation in
Islam, so we have a new type of
Islam. This doesn't work because you could have
done it 1 year before you died, 5
years before you died, 10 years before you
died. Take care of your family when you're
alive. And it's a very simple solution to
the problem. I've seen 100 of cases, I'm
telling you. And when people follow this,
you can go ahead and read You can
distribute whatever you want to whoever you want
to make sure that they're taken care of.
And then whatever is left, whatever the 1
8th or the 1 6th or less gonna
get distributed,
it's gonna be taken care of. And they're
gonna be fine.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the great thing about imams.
People still don't listen to us when we
tell them, but we don't have to do
anything that they tell us. Right?
Yeah.
That's
the problem.
I like my mom and dad, but I
don't want to give them any property until
I die. What kind of statement is that?
You know? No. I I I know. I'm
just I'm just I'm just emotionalizing it. Right?
Because, you know, this is not the way
it's supposed to be. That's my point. So
if we're gonna follow Islam, we should follow
Islam fully, to the entire extent, with everything.
Shal'e, go ahead.
Correct.
This gifting is before you die. Bequests are
only after you die. Bequest is written before
you die, but it gets executed after you
die.
You gift on your own when you're alive.
Right? So let's say, for example, let's say
I I was concerned with my mom. Okay?
And I'm I'm concerned that, you know, let's
say I had a lot of wealth. Right?
These are all hypothetical scenarios because I neither
have a lot of wealth nor am I
concerned for my mom because she's fine. Alhamdulillah.
But,
let's say I'm concerned
and
I'm thinking, what's gonna happen after I die?
I need some of this wealth to go
to her.
You know mom, let me buy you let
me buy you an apartment so you're taken
care of. Now, now, do I know when
I'm gonna die? No. But I'll go ahead
and buy this for you right now. It's
not a big deal. You're my mom and
you're taken care of and I can feel
comfortable.
And and I know that if I lose
my job, I lose all my money. I
know if I'm like, you know, mom, I
need some of that apartment back, you know,
can you kind of gift it back to
me? She's got my back too. This is
what family supposed to be. Right? But today
everyone just looks purely individualistic. No. If I
give it to them, then they're gonna take
my money, and they're gonna do this, and
It can't be like that, you know. So
we can't fall into that that that scenario.
So that really the problem is with the
way family families are operating. They need to
come back to 1 It's not only laws.
Islamic ethics of how you treat your family
members, how you care for your family members.
Is your wealth the number one priority? If
you got a problem, you say, I'm concerned
for my daughter. I'm concerned that my sons
are not gonna treat my daughter correctly and
she's getting less than the share of the
sons and the sons have really good jobs
and the daughter, I'm concerned she got married
to a really bad guy and this guy
is,
you know, he's lazy. He doesn't get a
job and he doesn't, you know, support the
family.
What do I do? Well, it's not fair.
The Islamic inheritance, she's not gonna get it.
Well, what do you do? Just give her
a lump sum of $100,000.
Here, I just bought you a house, you
know. If anytime, you know, this guy is
not working out for you, you're taken care
of, you know. And, you know, this guy
is supposed to be supporting you anyways. If
he doesn't support you,
you support him according to one opinion, you
can count zakat being given to your husband
because he doesn't have a job and he's
able to work. Yeah.
No. So when that bank account that you're
depositing into is made available to her no.
It belongs to her now.
So if it belongs to her now, she
can access it now. It doesn't belong to
you, and you can't take it back. So
this is this thing about ownership. The once
you give ownership of your wealth to someone
else, it is transferred over. So you cannot
be like You cannot have it both ways.
Right? You cannot say, well, I'm gonna put
this money in this account for you, at
the same time I have control over it.
So if I ever need it, it's mine.
I'm gonna use it, but then it's temporarily
yours. That doesn't work. It's either you give
it to them or you're not gonna give
it to them. Right? That's the default. Now,
of course, in law, there's a lot of
tricks and things. I understand in law, there's
a lot of, you know, nuance and all
of that stuff. That's where you wanna probably
get a trust made, if you have a
lot of wealth and things like that. But
I'm telling you this is the the general
rule, and now you wanna make sure 2
things. Okay? You wanna make sure number 1,
ownership is clear cut from the law in
which you're functioning, the the parameters in which
you're functioning in in the state in which
you live, number 1. And number 2, you
wanna make sure well, number 3. Number 2,
you wanna make sure you avoid taxes as
much as possible. This happens to everyone. People
put money in their kids' accounts in order
to avoid certain type of taxes, then you
have gift tax, then you have that tax,
and all of that stuff. So you wanna
maximize
or minimize the amount of taxes that you're
gonna pay. You wanna minimize
your probate or you wanna avoid probate completely,
which is the, you know, court fees that
you're gonna have to go through and, you
know, potential lawsuits and disputes and all of
that stuff, you know, with the will and
all of that. So you wanna do all
of that while still living up to the
basic
principles
of Islam that is Allah has set forth
for us. Right? And that's quite tricky to
get all of that done. That's why it
probably is good. If you have a lot
of assets,
you probably definitely wanna get a good lawyer
who has a good understanding of Islamic law,
or at least basic understanding of how to,
you know, apply this, as well as a
good understanding of of the law system today.
Okay? Yes.
How much you can give to charity,
when you're when you're dying?
One third is everything.
Yes. Everything is everything is combined.
So let's say you wanna give to your
next door neighbor,
you wanna give to your best friend, and
you wanna give to charity.
10%, 10%, 10%.
You only have 3% left to work with.
Once you hit 1 third, you cannot give
any any more to anyone else. Are there
any restrictions
on giving gifts while you're alive?
So,
that's a good question.
Are there restrictions on giving gifts while you're
alive?
One, you have to be fair to your
children.
K? So in terms of fairness, yes, you
have to be fair. But when you're alive,
there is certain principles of, if there is
merit to giving more of a gift to
someone because of what they're doing, they're more
righteous, they're more, you know, doing something else,
you can
give more to one child. And you can
give less to a child if they're engaging
in sins and they're utilizing that money for
something wrong or something like that as well.
So there are some limits, but generally, you
have an opening while you're alive to give
gifts to kind of whoever you want, as
long as your intention is not to exclude
your heirs or deprive them or something like
that.
No.
Which example you're talking about? Giving in charity
and No. The The 1 third?
Yeah. As long as you're being fair, there's
no limits.
So that's a long discussion.
Yeah. I don't know the password to this
computer.
So
hold on.
Yes.
Uh-oh.
When you're gifting while you're alive?
Okay.
So
Okay. So when it comes to gifts while
you're alive, do you have to follow the
fraction of 2 to 1 ratio when it
comes to sons and daughters? So there's actually
a difference of opinion among scholars.
According to the school that I follow and
according to many scholars in the Hanafi school
of thought, it's supposed to be equal.
It's not 2 to 1 ratio when you're
alive. It's supposed to be equal. Okay?
Hold on. Brothers, can we keep it down
Insha'Allah? I can't hear.
When person dies, he leaves 2 kids behind?
Okay.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay. The first scenario is when he dies,
if he has kids, the wealth the wealth
gets distributed to the kids immediately, even if
they're 1 year old, even if they're a
child, even if they're 6 months old. It
will become their property.
Now it doesn't mean you hand them cash,
you know, to the 6 month old. Right?
Because they're gonna buy candy or something. But
someone is gonna control that wealth, but it
belongs to them. So that wealth is transferred.
You do not wait
to transfer that wealth. That wealth gets transferred
over to them, and they own it, but
then there's a custodian over that wealth. In
the second scenario
Yeah. They
They're not
it's no. No. So they're they're just supervising
that wealth. They're they cannot use that money
for themselves. It's not their money. It belongs
to that person. Right?
So allowance
for administering the funds, which is reasonable, would
be something if you're investing their money. Right?
So it depends on what's happening with the
money. If that money just sits in a
bank account and you have a custodian access
over it, you don't take,
you know, an amount of that just because
you happen to have your name on that
because you're not doing anything. So that would
be unjust. Right? So it really depends on
the scenario of what you're doing with that
wealth. But generally, if you're a custodian,
you are gonna be supervising that wealth. It
doesn't belong to you. That's the key to
keep in mind. It doesn't belong to you.
It belongs to the child.
2nd category is person is missing. If they're
legally pronounced dead,
then their assets get distributed.
If they show up 5 years later,
the the rule is if they show up
a few years later, and it turns out
that they weren't dead, but they were declared
to be dead, then whatever money is remaining
is gonna be redistributed
to them, but they do not
the heirs who collected that money
are not in debt to the person if
they've already spent the money.
In war zones and stuff. Yes?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes.
I know. And that's why even in the
Hanafi school, the scholars, they say we should
go with the Maliki position on this opinion,
which is a few years of waiting because
the Hanafi opinion on this is too strict,
and it's not practicable. You have to wait
till you basically die, so your children will
inherit. Yeah. So they say in this scenario,
you go with the imam Malik's fatwa on
this, and I believe it's like 3 years
or something like that, Insha Allah to,
okay. I I think I'm supposed to announce
Sheikh, can you come back in the room,
please?
My Can you get him?
He sent me half a text message, so
I don't know what the rest of it
is. Yes.
After you die. No. You cannot do that.
That's a very good question. It's very common.
So people will say, oh, I have all
of this jewelry. I When I die, I
want all of this jewelry to go to
my daughter and obviously not to my sons,
because they're not supposed to be wearing the
jewelry. But you can't do that after you
die. You have to do it before you
die. Right?
What's that?
So so here's the thing. Okay. If they
agree,
if they agree to forego this, what's gonna
basically be happening, it's equivalent to, it gets
distributed between sons and daughters, and the sons
are like, we have an understanding that we're
just gonna give it to our sister because
we don't want this jewelry anyways. And if
they do that, it's perfectly fine, but it
qualifies
as a gift
being given from the sons to the daughters.
Okay? Okay. Yes.
Okay.
I see. Okay. So if you own if
you're if you have a mortgage or if
you're paying off a car or something like
that, who do you have debts to? Who
do you have to pay off? Well, when
it comes to those type of properties that
you've not paid off completely, it depends on
what your heirs wanna do. If they wanna
pay that off, they can get they're gonna
inherit the the
the,
the amount of
ownership that you have. Right? So if you
needed to, you could either liquidate that and
you could re reclaim whatever, you know, percentage
that you have that gets distributed to your
heirs, or if they wanna go ahead and
they wanna pay that off. But it's not
talking primarily about those type of debts. When
When we're talking about debts, we're talking about
things that you specifically owe to people on
an individual
level. And they have rights to those debts
prior to
your heirs actually receiving your shares.
Okay?
Yes.
Exactly. So when they if if it's husband
and wife or anyone, son and daughter son
and father or
mother and daughter, if they're
owning something jointly, they should keep track of
what share of ownership they have in that
thing. And then that becomes
the estate of each one of them.
Okay? So it's very important to keep track
of what you have, because this what happens
in traditional families. You have this
large families, they have this pot of money
between them, and there's like no there's no
division of who owns what. It's like all
the brothers,
all the sisters, they they just own everything
together. But that doesn't work out for distribution
because you say, well, one person's working more,
one person sitting on the island and, you
know, relaxing,
you know. So where is the ownership?
You have to have some type of clearly
defined ownership. Keep track of it. You keep
track. Exactly. You keep track of it.
So that kid who dies, who had that
money and he's still young,
his heirs
will inherit from
him. So whatever he owns, so let's say,
you know, somebody dies, leaves money, $10,000
to a 3 year old kid. The 3
year old kid dies. Whoever are his heirs,
including his parents or whoever else there is,
they're gonna be inheriting that money from him.
Not the custodian. No. The custodian doesn't inherit
the money. Yes.
You have a question. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh,
sorry. Let's let's close this up. Who has
a question? Raise your hand. Okay. So 1,
2
I'll stay afterwards.
1, 2, 3,
4. And then we're done, inshallah. Go ahead.
5.
Mhmm.
No. That's not correct. Grandson will inherit when
the son is not there.
What you probably The father will stay alive.
The son dies. Mhmm. The grandson is alive.
Yeah. The grandson is alive.
No. No. That's not correct.
He will inherit, inshallah.
So the son takes the play this grandson
takes the place of the son when they're
not there. The grandfather takes the place of
the father when they're not there, so they
will still inherit.
Who's number 2? Number 2. Go ahead.
Okay. If they pass away, you mean they
were supposed to inherit, but it it didn't
get through court, and then they died? Yeah.
The Metropolitan Health of the Court. Yes.
Yes. The money should still be going to
them. Because sometimes it can take it can
take years. Yeah. It can take years. Yeah.
Islamically, yes. They should have they that money
should have been considered their right.
And then when it transfers over, they're gonna
get their share, and then it's gonna transfer
back to their heirs.
Yes.
Correct. Yes, ma'am.
So, you know,
there's
Islamic discussion and then there's the law discussion.
Right? You just go by the law in
which you live in because that's the way
accounts are gonna function. So the same the
whatever way it applies in whatever state you're
living in or state of California or America,
you're gonna apply those rules in terms of
when to hand the money over. Now there's
a you know,
I won't go into details of it, but
let's leave it at that, Insha'Allah.
Who is number 3?
In number 3, Insha'Allah.
No.
Mhmm.
Mhmm.
Mhmm.
Yep.
So so here's the thing.
Regardless of how
it exists
on paper,
it should be clear mutual understanding between
them in terms of who owns what.
What percentage of ownership does each one have
in this wealth? And that's the problem with
a lot of people. They don't have they
don't
clarify that. And that causes a lot of
problems within the family. So they should have
a just a clear understanding between them. What
does joint ownership on paper in this bank
account mean for us? What does it mean?
Right?
So you have to be clear. If it
means 5050, then it's 5050. If it doesn't
mean that, then, you know, if you just
put someone else's name on an account for
whatever reason, you say, well, I'm just doing
this for tax reasons or whatever it may
be. But that was not the intention to
actually have you that ownership, and that's understood
within the family, then you apply that.
See. This is this is the problem. So
the idea of 100%
ownership for both is not a concept that
you can apply because how are you gonna
redistribute things back. Right? So that exists within
society, but it doesn't exist within
the fundamental framework of Islamic
law. So there needs to be clear ownership
of property in order for you to be
able to distribute that property.
It's,
it shouldn't be that way. That should not
be the default. Yeah. Yes.
Right.
Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Right.
Alright.
Right.
Right. Right.
Yeah. So so the thing is they should
not they should not be depriving when they
know that it was done for a specific
reason, they should not be depriving the people
who actually have that ownership.
Right.
Yep.
Yep.
That's why we did this program so that
everybody knows. Yeah.
Now that now that the program is done,
we just need to share the link with
everyone and make them watch it.
Mhmm.
But she's not the real daughter. She has
no blood blood relation.
I got it. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, you
don't have to share with her. She doesn't
actually have a share to the inheritance, but
usually when a scenario like that happens, they
can leave a bequest to that person, or
they should leave a bequest when you have
someone close like that. Told me will I
have to leave the marriage.
Oh, so that becomes like the her bequest,
basically.
Yeah.
No. Then you don't have to.
If you're the only bloodline, then no.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I got it.
Oh, so so they are blood brothers
of hers.
Uh-huh.
No. Because you block her.
Yeah.
Yeah. No. It doesn't matter about that. No.
That's that doesn't matter. Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
I'll I'll speak with you afterwards, Indeet, in
in I'll I'll I'll I have to figure
yeah. One part I missed. One really important
thing is you it's very important to identify
who
remains alive
and how they're connected to the deceased.
Okay. So a lot of people will come
and they'll ask you and they'll tell you
something like, you know, okay. So and so
died, and he left behind,
2 brothers and a sister. Now what they
mean is
that the person who died was the son
of the deceased,
and he said he left behind 2 brothers
and a sister including me. That doesn't mean
that the brother and sister of the deceased,
it means that they're children of the deceased.
So people will often use the wrong terminology
because they're referring to themselves in the question
when they're talking about the deceased. So you
have to make sure to identify
who is remaining alive and what is their
correct connection to the deceased
before calculating things. Okay.
Yeah.
So I'll talk to you privately afterwards, insha'Allah.
So I I think we have to conclude
this, insha'Allah.
So I will I will stay till midnight,
Insha'Allah, and answer questions, but this live stream
is gonna expire. So we need to just
Last question, Insha'Allah.
So why not give them payments over a
period of time?
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I understand, that
can be a challenge for some people. I
don't know any Islamic work around around
that. Alright. So we'll conclude. Insha'Allah, I can
continue taking questions. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
increase us in knowledge, increase us in practice,
and may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
give us the wisdom,
and the effort to be able to
implement the rules and laws that he has
set forth for us.
Oh, I was told to mention make a
quick announcement. We have a Hajj
program,
that's going to be
through IAOC.
And
we also have an umrah
in spring.
And I was told by sheikh Fakih, all
the details are gonna be announced later. Only
announce this part.
It's done.