The grandfather with brothers and sisters

People are often surprised that the four Sunni schools of law produce the same inheritance result for the overwhelming majority of families. The fixed shares, blocking, ʿawl and radd are common ground. The schools part company mainly in one scenario: when a paternal grandfather inherits alongside the deceased's brothers and sisters, with no father in between. The classical books call it al-Jadd wa al-Ikhwa.

Two answers

The Ḥanafī school treats the grandfather as standing in for the father. A father excludes the brothers and sisters entirely, so under the Ḥanafī view the grandfather does too — the siblings receive nothing.

The Mālikī, Shāfiʿī and Ḥanbalī schools follow the method attributed to Zayd ibn Thābit: the grandfather shares with the siblings (muqāsama) rather than excluding them. He is given whichever of three outcomes is best for him — a share alongside the siblings as though he were one of them, one third of what remains after the fixed shares, or one sixth of the whole estate.

The grandfather's options

In the schools that follow Zayd, when no fixed-share heir is present the grandfather takes whichever is better for him: dividing with the siblings as one of the brothers (muqāsama), or a third of the estate.

When fixed-share heirs are present, he takes the best of three: muqāsama of what remains, a third of what remains, or a sixth of the whole estate. He never falls below a sixth, and if the fixed shares leave less than that, the case is raised by ʿawl to give it to him.

The most famous case of all

This terrain contains al-Akdariyya — a husband, a mother, a grandfather and a single full sister — long taught as the trickiest single problem in farāʾiḍ. The sister is first given a fixed half, the base is raised by ʿawl, and then the grandfather and sister pool their portions and re-divide them two to one, settling the estate over a base of twenty-seven.

The calculator computes all four schools and tells you, for the family you entered, whether they agree or differ — and if they differ, you can switch schools to see exactly which heir's share changes.

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.