Deducting expenses before dividing the inheritance

10-3-2009 | IslamWeb

Question:

Father and mother died and left behind mature sons, daughters and wealth. The heirs ask the oldest son to become a trustee of the estate, in order to manage and distribute the wealth to the inheritors. The trustee incurs expenses and losses in the process; such as taxes on property, fees for lawyer and registration, losses in liquidating assets, rent, travel, etc. The question is: Given that Quran states that son's share is twice as much as the daughter's share, should the expenses and losses be shouldered equally by the sons and daughters; that is, by deducting such expenses before distributing the wealth to the heirs, or should the wealth be distributed and then the sons pay from their share twice as much as the daughters for the expenses?

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

Whoever is in charge of running the inheritance has the right to deduct what he had spent on it provided he proves that with legal evidence.

In principle, he should deduct what was spent on the inheritance and consumed for its benefit before the division of inheritance, because it is like a debt; he should start with it first and then the remainder of the inheritance should be divided among the inheritors.

Nonetheless, it is also permissible for him to divide the inheritance among the inheritors first and then he should divide whatever he spent on it on the heirs according to the share of each person in it [inheritance]; in which case, a person who has two shares in the inheritance, should bear two shares of the expenses, and so forth.

Allah Knows best.