Islamic Inheritance (Mirath) Explained: Shares, Awl and Radd

Before a single rupee is divided, three payments come out in strict order. First, funeral and burial costs. Second, every debt, including unpaid zakat and unperformed Hajj dues. Third, the wasiyyah, a bequest of up to one third, and only to non-heirs. What remains is the net estate that faraid divides.

This order matters because most family disputes start here. A Western will that gives everything to the spouse silently violates the fixed rights of parents and children. The calculator enforces the order automatically and caps wasiyyah at one third.

Husband takes one half if there are no descendants, one quarter if there are. Wife takes one quarter without descendants, one eighth with. Multiple wives share that portion equally. Father always takes one sixth, plus any residue when there is no son. Mother takes one third without descendants, one sixth with.

One daughter alone takes one half. Two or more daughters share two thirds. With sons present, daughters drop the fixed share and join the residuary pool, where each son counts double. Sons themselves are pure residuary heirs: they take what remains after fixed shares.

Take a husband, two daughters, a mother and a father. Fixed shares add to one quarter plus two thirds plus one sixth plus one sixth, which is fifteen twelfths, over the whole. Classical scholars solve this with Awl, scaling every share down by the same ratio, twelve fifteenths. The husband lands at twenty percent, the daughters at about fifty-three, each parent near thirteen.

Awl is not a modern hack. Umar ibn al-Khattab applied it, and all four schools accept it. Any calculator that silently caps at 100% without telling you is lying about the maths.

A wife and a mother take one eighth plus one third, leaving thirteen twenty-fourths unclaimed. With no son and no father to absorb residue, the surplus returns to the fixed heirs except the spouses. The mother rises from one third to three quarters while the wife stays at one eighth.

Spouses never receive Radd in the majority view. If only a husband survives, he keeps his half and the rest passes to distant kindred, which is exactly when you must consult a scholar instead of a calculator.

Presence removes people. A son blocks grandchildren through him, brothers and sisters in most cases. A father blocks grandfathers and, with sons, much of the extended family. A living heir higher in the order silently erases lower ones, which is why the first question is always who survives, not how much money exists.

This tool covers the common core: spouse, parents, sons and daughters. Siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and multiple marriages change the blocking map, so treat those cases as scholar territory and use the result here only as orientation.