Dhawū al-arḥām: relatives through the female line

Who they are, and when they inherit

Dhawū al-arḥām are relatives who are neither fixed-share heirs nor residuaries: a daughter's children, a sister's children, the maternal grandfather, maternal uncles and aunts, paternal aunts, and others like them.

They come last. If any fixed-share heir other than a spouse survives, the remainder goes back to that heir by radd, and if any residuary survives he takes it, so the distant kindred receive nothing. They inherit only when no heir but a spouse is left, and even then the spouse first takes a full, unreduced share.

Two methods

The Ḥanafī school uses qarāba (nearness): the kindred are ranked in classes, the nearest class takes everything, and within it a male takes twice a female's portion.

The early Mālikī and Shāfiʿī position sent such an estate to the public treasury (bayt al-māl). Their later scholars, like the Ḥanbalīs, use tanzīl: each relative stands in the place of the heir through whom they are related and takes that heir's share. In the Ḥanbalī school males and females then share equally.

In the calculator

The calculator applies qarāba for the Ḥanafī school and tanzīl for the other three. Some combinations are left open in the Mālikī and Shāfiʿī texts, such as a spouse with a maternal aunt under the Mālikī school; those cases are marked for review rather than given a guessed answer.

Worked examples

Every share below is computed by the calculator's engine when this page loads. Open any example to change the family and see what moves.