Hibah Calculator — Fair Gifts to Your Heirs

How to Use This Hibah Calculator

Choose Equal Gift Check to compare lifetime gifts across your children or heirs. Add each one by name and enter the amount given or planned for them — the tool flags anyone receiving above or below the average, so you can catch an unequal gift before it causes a dispute later.

Choose Family Home (Ruqba/Umra) if you're considering gifting the family home to a spouse or relative with a possible reverting condition — property that returns to you or your estate if they predecease you. Select your recipient, whether a condition is stated, and your jurisdiction, then read both scholarly views side by side. This mode deliberately does not give a single answer, because credentialed scholars genuinely disagree on whether a reverting condition still holds once the gift is possessed.

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What Is Hibah? The Islamic Lifetime Gift Explained

Hibah is a voluntary transfer of property from one person to another during the giver's lifetime — a gift, not an inheritance or a will. It can go to anyone: a spouse, a child, a friend, a charity, even someone who would otherwise receive nothing under Faraid. There is no cap on the amount, unlike Wasiyyah's 1/3 ceiling, because the giver is disposing of their own property while still alive, not directing what happens to an estate after death.

A Hibah becomes legally and religiously complete once three conditions are met: a clear offer by the giver, acceptance by the recipient, and qabd — possession or delivery of the gift. Until possession genuinely transfers, the gift is only a promise, and promises of a future gift are not binding in the same way a completed Hibah is. For cash or movable property this is usually straightforward; for real property like a family home, most jurisdictions also require formal registration or transfer of title for the gift to be legally recognised, in addition to its Islamic validity.

The Equal-Treatment Hadith

The starting point for any Hibah to your own children is a hadith about a companion, Bashir ibn Sa'd, who gave a gift to one son and asked the Prophet ﷺ to witness it. The Prophet ﷺ asked whether he had given the same to all his children; when told no, he refused to witness it, saying: "Fear Allah and be just to your children" (Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim). The majority of scholars read this as a firm instruction: gifts to children should be equal — the same amount to each child, regardless of gender, unlike Faraid's 2:1 male-to-female inheritance ratio. A minority of jurists accept unequal gifts where there is a genuine, justifiable reason, such as one child's greater need, disability, or financial hardship — but not favouritism, and not simply because a child is male.

Hibah vs. Wasiyyah vs. Faraid

The three instruments work together, not against each other: Hibah first (during life), then Wasiyyah (up to 1/3, after death), then Faraid (the remaining estate, by fixed share). See our companion post Hibah vs. Wasiyyah vs. Faraid: What's the Difference? for the full comparison, including why some families use Hibah specifically to give a daughter or a caregiving child more than their eventual Faraid share would provide.

Can a Hibah Be Taken Back?

This varies by madhab. The Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools generally treat a Hibah as irrevocable once qabd has occurred, with one recognised exception: a parent may reclaim a gift given to their own child. The Hanafi school is comparatively more permissive of revocation after qabd, except where the gift was given to a spouse, to a close relative within a prohibited-marriage degree, or where the gift has since been consumed or increased in value. Because this differs by school, confirm the position with a scholar familiar with your madhab before assuming either way.

Ruqba and Umra: The Family-Home Question

Ruqba and Umra are historical forms of Hibah given with a reverting condition attached — commonly used today to let a surviving spouse keep the family home for their lifetime, with the property returning to the giver's estate (and then to Faraid heirs) only if the recipient dies first. This is the single most contested area covered on this page: a hadith in Sahih Muslim states that once such a gift is given, it belongs permanently to the recipient and their heirs, which many scholars read as voiding the reverting condition entirely. Other scholars read the same hadith as abolishing only a specific pre-Islamic loan custom, not a modern, clearly-documented conditional gift — and hold that the condition can still be enforced. Neither view is fringe; both are held by credentialed scholars, and the Family Home mode above shows both rather than asserting one. See Can Your Spouse Keep the Family Home in Islam? for the full picture, including the naming distinction from Umrah (the pilgrimage) and geo-specific notes for Singapore, Malaysia and Western joint-asset jurisdictions.

Hibah and Living Trusts

Some families outside Muslim-majority countries consider a living trust as an alternative structure for passing on a family home or business. A trust is a Western legal instrument, not an Islamic one, so its permissibility depends on whether its terms can be made to align with Hibah, Wasiyyah and Faraid rather than override them. See Are Living Trusts Permissible in Islam? for how the two frameworks compare.

Why Families Use Hibah Alongside Faraid

Faraid distributes what's left in the estate by a fixed formula, and that formula cannot be adjusted for individual circumstances — a daughter who spent years as her parent's primary caregiver still receives her ordinary Faraid share, no more, no less, and a Wasiyyah cannot legally top her up beyond 1/3 without the other heirs' consent. Hibah is the tool families use, while the giver is still alive, to address exactly this kind of situation directly: a lifetime gift recognising specific care, need or contribution, given freely and outside Faraid's fixed formula entirely. It's worth repeating that this flexibility cuts both ways — the same freedom that lets a parent recognise a caregiving child also makes favouritism easy to fall into by accident, which is precisely why the equal-treatment hadith exists as a check on that freedom rather than a suggestion.

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