Islamic Inheritance Calculator: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dividing an Estate
Reviewed by the OnlineFree.app team · Updated
Key points
- The Islamic Inheritance Calculator applies standard Sunni faraid rules to a spouse, parents, sons and daughters and returns fractions, percentages and cash amounts instantly.
- Faraid is calculated on the net estate after debts, funeral costs and bequest, and a bequest above one-third triggers a warning.
- 'Awl raises the base denominator when fixed shares exceed one; radd returns a surplus to blood heirs when they fall short.
- Husband and wife are mutually exclusive in the calculator, so selecting one clears the other and no marriage is double-counted.
- Rounding to two decimals can leave totals one cent off, so reconcile the final transfer against the fraction column.
What the Islamic Inheritance Calculator does
The Islamic Inheritance Calculator splits a deceased person's net estate among a surviving spouse, parents, sons and daughters using standard Sunni (jumhur) faraid rules, and returns each heir's fraction, percentage and cash amount instantly. You enter the estate value, select who is alive, and the arithmetic happens in the browser with no account, no email and nothing uploaded.
We built it for the phone-in-one-hand situation: an Arabic RTL interface, a currency selector covering SAR, EGP, AED, KWD and USD, an optional Arabic-Indic digit display, and sensible defaults (100,000 estate, both parents alive, one son and one daughter). Most real cases take under a minute once you have the debts and bequest figures in front of you.
One honesty note that matters more than any feature: the rule set is the majority position, and the few Hanafi/Shafi'i differences appear as a visible note rather than silently changing the numbers. That makes the output a defensible working draft, not a fatwa. Start here: Islamic Inheritance Calculator.
Step 1: enter the estate and deduct debts
Faraid is never applied to the gross estate. Enter the total value the deceased left, then subtract everything that comes off the top: unpaid debts, funeral costs and any bequest (wasiyya). The estate field accepts a positive number with at most two decimals; the deductions field must be zero or more and cannot exceed the estate value.
The one-third cap on bequests is enforced with a warning. Take a 100,000 estate with 12,000 of debts, 3,000 of funeral costs and a 10,000 bequest — the distributable base becomes 75,000. The bequest is checked against the post-debt estate (85,000 here, so a one-third ceiling of about 28,333), and anything above the ceiling is flagged rather than quietly paid out.
The most common input mistake we see is entering the value of one asset — usually the family house — instead of the whole estate, or forgetting a debt the deceased still owed. Every output scales linearly, so a wrong base produces a table that is internally consistent and completely misleading.
Step 2: pick spouse, parents and children
The spouse control is a segmented choice of none, husband or wife, with a separate counter for one to four wives. Husband and wife are mutually exclusive, so selecting one clears the other — a deliberate guard against double-counting a marriage that no longer exists as a survivor relationship.
Father and mother are independent toggles, both on by default; switch off whichever parent predeceased the deceased. Sons and daughters are steppers from 0 to 20 each. Count only the living children of the deceased here: a grandchild whose own father died before the deceased is not a son, and belongs in the advanced options instead.
A worked case shows the logic. Estate 100,000, no deductions, one wife, no parents, one son and one daughter: the wife takes 1/8 (12.5%) = 12,500, leaving 87,500 split 2:1 — son 14/24 (58.33%) = 58,333.33, daughter 7/24 (29.17%) = 29,166.67. If you only want the share table, the faraid calculator shows it as soon as the last stepper settles.
How do you read the 'awl and radd notes?
Below the share table, the distribution summary names the distributable base, the asl al-mas'ala (the base denominator), whether 'awl or radd was applied, and the total actually distributed. The denominator is the smallest number that lets every share be written as a whole number — 24 in the example above, because 1/8 and the 2:1 residue both fit inside 24.
'Awl happens when the fixed shares add up to more than one. A husband, mother, father and daughter give 1/4 + 1/6 + 1/6 + 1/2 = 3/12 + 2/12 + 2/12 + 6/12 = 13/12, so the base is raised to 13 and everyone is scaled down proportionally: on 100,000 that is 23,076.92 for the husband, 15,384.62 each for the parents and 46,153.85 for the daughter.
Radd is the opposite. A daughter and mother with no other heirs take 1/2 + 1/6 = 2/3, leaving a third undistributed; radd returns it in proportion to the fixed shares, giving the daughter 3/4 (75,000) and the mother 1/4 (25,000). Spouses are treated differently in radd under the standard handling, which is exactly the kind of case worth confirming with a scholar before you transfer money.
When the calculator refuses to split the estate
The advanced chips add heirs outside the core set: grandsons through a predeceased son, full brothers and sisters, paternal siblings, and the grandmother. Some combinations of these fall outside the supported rule matrix, and when that happens the tool shows an explicit 'requires a scholar' card instead of a number.
That refusal is a feature. Sharing between competing sibling classes, the grandfather alongside siblings, and a grandson surviving next to a living son all involve ordering rules the schools handle differently. A confident-looking percentage in those cases is worse than a blank, because families act on it.
If you hit the guard, capture the case instead of guessing: the base after deductions, the full list of survivors, and which of them are full, paternal or maternal relatives. Take that sheet to a qualified scholar or your local sharia court, and treat the tool's other outputs as the starting arithmetic only.
Can you distribute an estate with this faraid calculator?
For the cases it supports, yes — as a working draft. Amounts are rounded to two decimals, so the rows can sum to 99,999.99 or 100,000.01; the fraction column is the authoritative part and the cash column follows from it. Reconcile the final transfer against the fractions, not against the rounded amounts.
Check three things before acting. First, whether your country's personal status law adds mandatory rules a general calculator does not model, such as a compulsory bequest for orphaned grandchildren. Second, whether the local applied school differs from the jumhur default. Third, whether distribution requires a court-issued inheritance certificate, which several jurisdictions do. None of these are guarantees we can make on your behalf.
When you need a second opinion or another calculator — from prayer times to currency conversion — the rest of OnlineFree.app free online tools runs on the same no-signup model. For anything involving real property or a large estate, the responsible last step is still a scholar or court, with this table as your supporting worksheet.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Islamic Inheritance Calculator free, and does it need a signup?
Yes. The Islamic Inheritance Calculator is free and opens directly in the browser on a phone or desktop, with no account, email address or download. Results appear as you change the inputs, and nothing you type is uploaded to a server, so the estate figures stay on your device.
Which heirs can I enter in the Islamic Inheritance Calculator?
The core set is a spouse (husband, or one to four wives), a father, a mother, and up to 20 sons and 20 daughters. Optional advanced chips add grandsons through a predeceased son, full brothers and sisters, paternal siblings and the grandmother. Combinations outside that matrix return a 'requires a scholar' card instead of a share table.
Does the Islamic Inheritance Calculator handle 'awl and radd?
Yes. The distribution summary reports the asl al-mas'ala denominator and flags 'awl when the fixed shares exceed one, as in the husband, mother, father and daughter case that totals 13/12 and is scaled to a base of 13. It also flags radd when a residue remains and is returned to the blood heirs, such as a daughter and mother splitting 3/4 and 1/4.
Is the result accurate enough to distribute a real estate?
It is accurate for the supported cases under majority Sunni rules, but treat it as a working draft rather than a ruling. Amounts are rounded to two decimals, the schools differ on some orderings, and many countries require a court or authorised committee to certify distribution. Verify the fractions with a qualified scholar before transferring any money.
What currencies does the Islamic Inheritance Calculator support?
The currency selector offers SAR, EGP, AED, KWD and USD, and the estate value is entered in whichever you choose. The currency only labels the cash column: the fractions and percentages are money-independent, so switching from riyals to dirhams changes the symbol and amount format but never the shares.