Islamic Inheritance Calculator
Get a basic estate-share breakdown for common family structures, rooted in Islamic inheritance principles. Enter the surviving family members and estate value, and see each heir’s share by the fixed Quranic portions.
▸ Debts, funeral costs, or a will (optional)
Subtracted from the estate first, before any shares are worked out.
Islamic law caps a bequest to non-heirs at one third of the estate after debts.
The starting point
Before any inheritance is worked out, Islamic law says the estate first covers funeral costs, then any outstanding debts, then up to one third of what remains can go to a bequest for someone who is not already an heir. Only what is left after that is divided among the heirs using the fixed shares below.
Fixed shares this tool applies
- A wife (or wives together) receives 1/4 of the estate if there are no children, or 1/8 if there are.
- A husband receives 1/2 of the estate if there are no children, or 1/4 if there are.
- A mother receives 1/6 if there are children or two or more siblings of the deceased, otherwise 1/3, with one special case: if both a spouse and the father are present and there are no children, the mother receives 1/3 of whatever remains after the spouse’s share.
- A father receives a fixed 1/6 if there are children, and additionally inherits any leftover as the closest male relative if there are daughters but no sons. With no children at all, the father inherits whatever remains after the spouse and mother.
- Daughters, with no sons present, receive 1/2 between them if there is one daughter, or 2/3 shared equally if there are two or more. If sons are also present, sons and daughters instead share the remainder together, with each son receiving twice the share of each daughter.
- Full siblings only inherit when there are no children and no surviving father. Sisters alone follow the same 1/2 or 2/3 pattern as daughters, and brothers alongside sisters share the remainder in the same two-to-one ratio as sons and daughters.
What is ‘awl?
Sometimes the fixed shares of the heirs present add up to more than the whole estate. When that happens, every fixed share is reduced by the same proportion so the total comes back down to exactly the full estate. This tool applies that adjustment automatically and will tell you when it happened.
Glossary
- Fara’id
- The Islamic science of fixed inheritance shares, drawn primarily from the Quran.
- Asaba
- A residuary heir, someone who inherits whatever is left over after the fixed-share heirs are paid, rather than a set fraction.
- Hajb
- Exclusion. Certain heirs block others from inheriting entirely, the clearest example being that a father and children both exclude siblings.
- ‘Awl
- A proportional reduction applied when the fixed shares of the heirs present add up to more than the full estate.
Worked Example: The Same Family, Three Scenarios
Numbers make these rules easier to follow than fractions alone. Here is one family carried through three scenarios. In every scenario, a man has passed away leaving an estate worth USD 2,400,000, and the same three sons and two daughters survive him. What changes each time is which other relatives are also still alive.
Scenario 1: Wife, both parents, and the children all survive
| Heir | Share | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Wife | 12.5% | USD 300,000 |
| Mother | 16.67% | USD 400,000 |
| Father | 16.67% | USD 400,000 |
| Each son (× 3) | 13.54% | USD 325,000 |
| Each daughter (× 2) | 6.77% | USD 162,500 |
With a wife and both parents also taking their fixed shares first, about 54 percent of the estate is left for the five children to split, two to one between sons and daughters.
Scenario 2: Same children, parents alive, but no wife
| Heir | Share | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Mother | 16.67% | USD 400,000 |
| Father | 16.67% | USD 400,000 |
| Each son (× 3) | 16.67% | USD 400,000 |
| Each daughter (× 2) | 8.33% | USD 200,000 |
Remove the wife from the picture and there is no 1/8 share to pay out first. The children’s combined portion grows from about 54 percent to two thirds of the estate, so each son and daughter takes home noticeably more than in Scenario 1.
Scenario 3: Same children, wife alive, but parents have already passed away
| Heir | Share | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Wife | 12.5% | USD 300,000 |
| Each son (× 3) | 21.875% | USD 525,000 |
| Each daughter (× 2) | 10.9375% | USD 262,500 |
Here it is the parents’ combined one third that disappears instead. With only the wife’s 1/8 taken off the top, the children’s share climbs to seven eighths of the estate, the largest portion of the three scenarios.
Same five children, same USD 2,400,000 estate, but a single son’s share moves from USD 325,000, to USD 400,000, to USD 525,000, purely based on which other relatives outlived their father. This is exactly why the calculator above asks about every surviving relative rather than just the children: each one changes what everyone else receives.
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