Islamic Inheritance Guide

Step 1: Confirm the Estate Is Ready for Distribution

Faraid only applies to what's left of the estate after three things are settled, in order: funeral and burial costs, all outstanding debts (to people and to Allah), and any valid Wasiyyah — a bequest capped at one-third of what remains, and only to someone who isn't already a Faraid heir. Distributing anything before this order is followed isn't just premature, it can mean redoing the whole calculation once a forgotten debt or bequest surfaces.

If a Wasiyyah exists, it needs to be valid — written, within the one-third cap, and not directed at someone who already has a fixed Faraid share — before it's paid out.

If you're reading this in the days right after a loss and haven't yet worked through the funeral and Ta'ziyah stage, our Janazah & Estate Guide covers that ground in full before you get here.

Step 2: Identify the Deceased's Faraid Heirs

Faraid heirs are a fixed, Quran-defined group — not every blood relative, and not a list the deceased gets to edit. They fall into two main categories: Ashab al-Furud (fixed-share heirs — spouse, children, parents, and some grandparents and siblings under specific conditions) and Asabah (residuary heirs, who take whatever remains after fixed shares are paid, typically the closest male agnate relatives).

Exactly what a given heir receives depends heavily on who else survives — a wife's share changes depending on whether there are children, a father's share changes depending on whether there's a son, and so on. Rather than restate every scenario here, each relation has its own dedicated article with every case worked out:

• Wife's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Husband's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Son's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Daughter's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Father's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Mother's Share in Islamic Inheritance
• Siblings' Share in Islamic Inheritance

Step 3: Apply the Blocking Rules (Hajb)

Not everyone on the list of possible heirs actually inherits — Hajb is the set of rules that blocks a more distant relative when a closer one survives, or reduces (without eliminating) a share when a specific relative is present. A son, for instance, blocks his own children and his siblings from inheriting directly; a father's presence reduces a mother's share from 1/3 to 1/6 in some cases, without ever removing it. Six heirs can never be fully blocked under any circumstance — the husband, wife, son, daughter, father, and mother.

Step 4: Assign the Fixed Quranic Shares

Once the eligible heirs are identified, each Ashab al-Furud heir is assigned their fixed fraction — one of six fractions set out directly in Surah An-Nisa (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 2/3, 1/3, or 1/6), depending on their relationship to the deceased and who else survives. Anything left over after every fixed share is paid passes to Asabah (residuary) heirs, most often the son, or the father acting in his residuary capacity when no son survives.

Step 5: Correct for Awl or Radd

Because the fixed fractions were each set independently in the Quran, adding them all up for a specific family doesn't always land on exactly 100% of the estate. Two mechanisms correct this. Awl proportionally reduces every heir's share when the fractions add up to more than the whole estate — everyone still receives their share, just slightly smaller than the nominal fraction. Radd returns the surplus proportionally to eligible heirs when the fractions add up to less than the whole estate and no Asabah heir exists to absorb the rest.

Step 6: Check for Distant Relatives and Special Cases

Two situations fall outside the standard fixed-share-then-residue process. When there are no children and no parents, the case is called Kalalah, and it specifically changes how siblings inherit. When there's no Ashab al-Furud heir and no Asabah heir at all — a rarer situation — more distant relatives, Dhawul Arham, become eligible; the presence of even one child usually rules this out entirely. A small number of named, famous combinations (Umariyyatayn, Mushtaraka and Akdariyyah) also produce results that don't follow the standard formula in the obvious way, and are worth knowing by name if your own case looks unusual.

Step 7: Confirm Which Madhab Framework Applies

The Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools agree on the core Quranic fractions and the overall order of the estate process — the differences are real, but narrower than people often expect. Where they diverge is in specific details within Faraid itself: some Radd rules, how a grandfather is treated when siblings also survive, and a handful of distant-relative and special cases. Knowing which madhab your family follows (or which your country's Faraid courts apply) matters most exactly in these edge cases.

For the complete rules of one specific school in one place: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali.

Step 8: Account for Non-Standard Family Situations

A few common real-world situations change the calculation in ways worth knowing about before you assume the standard case applies: more than one wife surviving, daughters inheriting with no surviving sons, and whether a surviving spouse actually has the right to keep living in the family home rather than see it sold and split immediately.

• Multiple Wives: Inheritance Rights in Islam
• Only Daughters and No Sons in Islamic Inheritance
• Can Your Spouse Keep the Family Home in Islam?

Step 9: See It Worked Out With Real Numbers

Every step above makes more sense once you've seen it applied to an actual family and an actual estate value. Our worked-example article runs through several full scenarios by hand — daughters only, no children at all, an Awl case, a Radd case, and multiple wives — showing every fraction and every number, not just the final split.

Step 11: Calculate Your Own Family's Shares

Everything above explains the logic. Working out the actual numbers for a specific family and a specific estate value is where a calculator earns its keep — the arithmetic is straightforward once you know the rules, but easy to get wrong by hand, especially once Awl, Radd or a blocking rule is involved.

If you're planning ahead rather than distributing an existing estate, preparing an Islamic will now — within the Wasiyyah rules covered in Step 1 — is the simplest way to make this whole process easier for the people you leave behind.