Islamic Inheritance Calculator (Faraid)

By the Editorial Team · reviewed against our sources · updated September 2026 · guidance, not a fatwa

How Islamic inheritance law works

Islamic inheritance law, known in Arabic as ʿilm al-faraid, is one of the most precisely defined areas of Islamic jurisprudence. Unlike many secular systems where a person can leave their whole estate to whomever they choose, Muslim inheritance fixes the core shares in advance. The Qur’an names the principal heirs and their fractions, and the Prophetic tradition and scholarly consensus fill in the detail. The result is a system designed to keep wealth circulating through the family while protecting the vulnerable, especially women and children, from being written out.

An Islamic inheritance calculator does not change any of these rules. It simply applies them to the specific set of relatives a person leaves behind, works out each fraction, resolves the special adjustments, and turns the abstract fractions into concrete amounts. Understanding what the calculator is doing behind the scenes helps you sanity-check its output and explain the result to your family.

The four steps before distribution

Before a single share is handed out, the estate passes through four ordered stages. Getting the order right matters, because each stage is funded from what the previous one leaves.

1. Funeral and burial costs. Reasonable expenses for washing, shrouding and burying the deceased are paid first, without extravagance.
2. Debts. All outstanding obligations are cleared next, including money owed to people, unpaid dowry (mahr) to a widow, and, in most scholarly views, financial religious duties such as unpaid zakat. If debts exhaust the estate, there is nothing left to inherit.
3. Bequests (wasiyyah). A voluntary bequest of up to one-third of what remains may be given to non-heirs or charitable causes. Anything above one-third, or any bequest to an existing heir, needs the consent of the other heirs.
4. Faraid. Whatever is left after the first three steps is the net estate that is divided among the legal heirs by their fixed shares.

To understand the difference between the compulsory shares and the voluntary bequest, see our guide to the Islamic will (wasiyyah).

The fixed-share heirs (ashab al-furud)

The first group to be served are the ashab al-furud, the heirs whose portions are fixed as named fractions. Their share depends on which other relatives are present, above all on whether the deceased left descendants. The table below summarises the main fixed shares in the majority Sunni tradition.

Notice how the presence of children changes almost everything. A husband’s share drops from a half to a quarter once there are children, and a wife’s share drops from a quarter to an eighth. Where there are several wives, that single fraction is divided equally among them. The parents’ shares also shift depending on whether descendants and siblings survive.

Residuaries (ʿasaba) and the 2:1 rule

After the fixed shares are allocated, any remaining wealth passes to the ʿasaba, the residuary heirs. The most important residuary is the son, who is never given a fixed fraction; instead he takes what is left after the sharers. When sons and daughters inherit together, the estate residue is split so that each son receives twice the portion of each daughter. In that combined case a daughter is no longer a fixed-share heir at 1/2 or 2/3; she becomes a residuary alongside her brothers and shares in the 2:1 ratio.

If there are no descendants, the father, then brothers, then more distant male agnates step into the residuary role in a defined order of priority. The residuary is what makes the system flexible: the fixed shares rarely add up to exactly the whole estate, and the ʿasaba absorb whatever the fractions leave behind. To see how this plays out for female heirs, read how much a daughter inherits in Islam.

ʿAwl: when the shares exceed the whole

Sometimes the fixed fractions add up to more than one whole estate. This happens, for example, when a husband and two full sisters survive with no children or parents. His half plus their two-thirds already comes to seven-sixths, more than the estate can pay. The classical solution is ʿawl: the shares are all reduced in proportion by raising the common denominator to match the total of the numerators. Everyone takes a slightly smaller slice, but the ratios between them stay the same.

On an estate of 70,000, the husband would receive 30,000 and the two sisters 40,000 between them, instead of the impossible 35,000 and 46,667 the raw fractions demand.

Radd: when a surplus is left over

The opposite situation is more common. Often the fixed shares add up to less than one whole and there is no residuary heir to take the rest. In that case the surplus is returned to the fixed-share heirs in proportion to their shares, a mechanism called radd. The one exception in the majority view is the spouse: a husband or wife does not benefit from radd, so any surplus returns only to the blood relatives.

For example, if a woman dies leaving only her mother and one daughter, the daughter’s 1/2 and the mother’s 1/6 come to just four-sixths. With no residuary present, the remaining two-sixths are returned to them in the ratio 3:1. The daughter ends up with three-quarters of the estate and the mother with one-quarter. On 40,000 that is 30,000 for the daughter and 10,000 for the mother.

The ʿUmariyyatān case

A famous pair of cases, decided by the Caliph ʿUmar and accepted by the majority of scholars, adjusts the mother’s share when the only heirs are a spouse and both parents, with no children. Normally the mother would take a third of the whole estate. But if she did, the father, taking the residue, could end up with less than her, inverting the usual relationship between them. The solution is to give the mother one-third of the remainder after the spouse’s share, rather than a third of the whole.

With a husband, mother and father and no children, the husband takes 1/2. Of the remaining half, the mother takes a third, which is one-sixth of the whole, and the father takes the rest. With a wife instead, she takes 1/4, the mother takes a third of the remaining three-quarters, which is one-quarter of the whole, and the father takes the balance. This rule applies specifically to the true father; a grandfather standing in his place does not trigger the same adjustment.

Blocking (hajb)

Not every relative inherits at once. Hajb is the rule by which a nearer heir can exclude a more distant one, either partially, by reducing their share, or totally, by removing them altogether. A son, for instance, blocks the deceased’s brothers and sisters from inheriting, and blocks grandsons through that same line. A father blocks the grandfather; a mother blocks the grandmother. Understanding hajb is essential, because a share that looks due on paper may be cancelled entirely by the presence of a closer relative. This is one of the main reasons a real distribution should be checked by someone trained in faraid rather than assumed from a fraction table alone.

Worked family scenarios

The clearest way to see faraid in action is through complete examples. The table below distributes a net estate of 120,000 among a common family: a wife, two sons and one daughter.

Here the wife takes her fixed eighth of 15,000. The remaining 105,000 is the residue, divided among the three children in the ratio 2:2:1, five shares of 21,000 each. Each son takes two shares and the daughter one, exactly the 2:1 ratio.

Husband and both parents, no children. On an estate of 60,000 the husband takes 1/2, which is 30,000. The remaining 30,000 is the mother’s base under the ʿUmariyyatān rule: she takes a third of it, 10,000, and the father takes the rest, 20,000. Notice she does not receive a third of the whole 60,000.

Only daughters, with a wife and father. Suppose a man dies leaving a wife, two daughters and his father, on an estate of 24,000. The wife takes 1/8 (3,000), the two daughters share 2/3 (16,000, or 8,000 each), and the father takes his fixed 1/6 (4,000). That accounts for 23,000; the leftover 1,000 returns to the father as residuary, so he receives 5,000 in total. A situation with no sons is explored further in our guide to inheritance if there are only daughters.

Why an Islamic will still matters

Because faraid fixes the shares, some people assume a will is unnecessary. The opposite is true. A written, Sharia-compliant will lets you appoint an executor and a guardian for young children, record your debts so they are not forgotten, direct up to one-third to non-heirs or charity, and make your wishes enforceable under the civil law of the country you live in. Without a will, a secular court may apply its own intestacy rules, which rarely match the Islamic shares. Read more in our guide to the Islamic will and wasiyyah, and see how giving during life connects to zakat and ongoing charity.

Using this faraid calculator

To use the calculator above, enter the net value of the estate, meaning the amount left after funeral costs, debts and any valid bequest. Then tick the relatives who survive the deceased and enter how many of each. The tool applies the fixed shares, resolves ʿawl or radd, honours the ʿUmariyyatān rule and the 2:1 residuary ratio, and returns each heir’s fraction and monetary amount. Because it works from the information you give it, its answer is only as accurate as your inputs, and it cannot resolve disputed facts, missing or unknown heirs, or differences between the schools of law. Use it to understand and plan, then confirm the final division with someone qualified. You can return to the homepage to explore our other Islamic finance tools.

This page is for general guidance only and is not a fatwa or legal ruling; complex estates need a qualified scholar or Sharia court.

Frequently asked questions