al-Mushtaraka: full brothers sharing the uterine siblings' third

The case

A woman dies leaving her husband, her mother (or a grandmother), two or more uterine brothers or sisters, and one or more full brothers. The husband takes a half, the mother a sixth and the uterine siblings a third. That exhausts the estate, and the full brothers, as residuaries, are left with nothing, although they share the same mother as the uterine siblings and the father besides.

The case is also called al-Ḥimāriyya. It is reported that when ʿUmar first ruled that the full brothers received nothing, they said: suppose our father was a donkey, are we not still sons of the same mother? ʿUmar then let them share in the third.

Where the schools differ

The Mālikī and Shāfiʿī schools follow ʿUmar's later ruling: the full brothers join the uterine siblings in the third, and all of them share it equally, male and female alike, as uterine siblings do. The Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī schools hold the other position, also reported from ʿAlī: the full brothers are residuaries, the fixed shares have used up the estate, so they receive nothing.

The question only arises with a full brother. A full sister on her own is not a residuary here: she takes her own fixed half, and the case becomes one of ʿawl instead.

In the calculator

Pick the Mālikī or Shāfiʿī school to see the third divided among all the brothers, or the Ḥanafī or Ḥanbalī school to see the full brothers excluded. The four-school comparison shows both side by side.

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.