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Fatwa CenterDivision of inheritance among daughter and full-sister
Question
Assalaamu alaykum. Please calculate the inheritance according to the following information: - Does the deceased have male relatives who are entitled to inherit: (A nephew from a full-brother) Number 1 - Does the deceased have female relatives who are entitled to inherit: (A daughter) Number 1 (A full sister) Number 1 - Additional information: The deceased is my uncle; my father died before my uncle, my Allaah have mercy on their souls. I am the only son, and I have 4 sisters. Do I or my sisters inherit from my uncle? My Allaah reward you plentifully!
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ʻalayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.
If the deceased did not leave behind eligible heirs other than one daughter, a full-sister, and a nephew from a full-brother, then the daughter gets half of the estate as a fixed share. Allaah, The Exalted, says (what means): {And if there is only one (daughter), for her is half...} [Quran 4:11]
The deceased's full-sister is entitled to the remainder of the estate by virtue of taʻseeb (i.e. by virtue of having a paternal relation with the deceased and not having an allotted share in the estate) based on the hadeeth narrated on the authority of Huzayl ibn Shurahbeel and reported by Al-Bukhari. It is for this reason that the scholars included the (full) sister among the heirs who inherit by taʻseeb if the deceased's descendants are females. In this case, the scholars advised that the full-sister takes whatever remains of the inheritance after its division, as was stated in Ar-Rahabiyyah (Poem on Islamic Laws of Inheritance).
The nephew from a full-brother has no share in the estate, although he is classified as ʻasabah (i.e. paternal relative entitled to inherit what remains after other heirs get their fixed shares) because the deceased's full-sister inherits as a ʻasabah in this case and is held in the same legal status of the full-brother in this regard and accordingly excludes all the other ʻasabah heirs excluded by the full brother. The Shaafiʻi book Nihaayat Az-Zayn reads, “When the deceased's full-sister inherits as a ʻasabah along with another, she is held in the same legal status of the deceased's full brother in this regard. Accordingly, she excludes all the other ʻasabah heirs from the inheritance excluded by the full brother...”
Hence, the estate should be divided into two shares; the deceased's daughter gets half of the estate as a fixed share (one share), and the full-sister gets the other half by virtue of taʻseeb (one share).
The nieces of the deceased from a full-brother are not entitled to any share in the inheritance in any case because they are not among the eligible female heirs to begin with regardless of whether they are nieces from a full-brother or half-brother on the father's side or on the mother's side. They have no share in the inheritance under any circumstances. This is different from the nephew from a full-brother or half-brother because the nephew is among the eligible heirs. However, the nephew may be excluded in some cases like yours; the deceased's full-sister excluded the nephew from a full-brother and inherited as a ʻasabah heir along with another.
Allaah knows best.
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