A wife's share in Islamic inheritance

A wife's share is one of the simplest rules in Faraid and one of the most often misapplied, usually in the same two ways: giving each of several wives a full share, and returning a surplus to a widow who is not entitled to it. Both are worked through below. Your own case takes a minute in the calculator.

The rule

From the Qur'an, 4:12:

• One quarter if the husband left no child and no agnatic grandchild.
• One eighth if he did.

A husband's mirror share is one half, falling to one quarter when there are children.

Co-wives divide one share, not one each

This is the error worth being loudest about. The Qur'anic text assigns the share to the wives collectively. If a man leaves four widows and two children, the widows do not take an eighth each — they take an eighth between them, a thirty-second apiece.

The "child" that triggers the reduction need not be the wife's own. A child from any marriage reduces every wife's share, and so does a son's child.

A surplus never returns to a widow

When the fixed shares leave a surplus and no residuary heir survives, the surplus is returned to the fixed-share heirs in proportion. A spouse is excluded from that return.

A man dies leaving a wife and one daughter, with an estate of PKR 800,000. The wife takes 1/8 = 100,000. The daughter takes her fixed 1/2 = 400,000. The remaining 300,000 has no residuary to claim it, so it returns to the daughter alone.

Where a widow is the only heir, this calculator does not quietly hand her the rest. It shows her quarter and reports the remainder as undistributed, because classically that surplus goes to the public treasury — a point covered on the methodology page.

Two more worked cases

A wife with sons and daughters

PKR 4,750,000, one wife, the deceased's mother, two sons and three daughters. The wife takes 1/8 = 593,750 and the mother 1/6 = 791,667. The rest is split between the children, two to one.

A wife where awl applies

One wife, two daughters, the father and the mother. The shares come to 3/24 + 16/24 + 4/24 + 4/24 = 27/24 — more than the estate. Awl raises the denominator to 27, and the wife's eighth becomes a ninth. This case is famous: it was put to Ali b. Abi Talib on the pulpit at Kufa, and it is known as al-Minbariyya for that reason. It is explained in awl and radd explained.

A widow's other entitlements

Two things are commonly confused with inheritance and are not part of it:

• Unpaid mahr. Deferred dower is a debt of the estate. It is paid in full before any heir inherits — and then the widow still takes her share as an heir on top.
• Her own property. Whatever a wife owns is hers. It is not part of her husband's estate and is not divided.

Common questions

Does a widow inherit if the marriage had problems?

A valid marriage at the time of death means she inherits. Where a divorce was in progress, whether it was complete matters, and the answer depends on the type of divorce and the stage reached. That is a question for a scholar with the facts in front of them.

Does she keep the family home?

The house is part of the estate and is divided like everything else. Her share of it is her share; it does not pass to her whole. Families often agree to leave a widow in the home, which is theirs to agree once the shares are established.

Does my wife inherit automatically if I live in the UK or the US?

Not in these proportions. Without a valid will, local intestacy law decides — and it usually gives a spouse far more than an eighth and the children far less. See Islamic wills in the UK.

Calculate a widow's share or read about the daughter's share.