Update the will. Your existing document almost certainly divides equally among children and leaves everything to a spouse first.
The Canadian position
Update the will. Your existing document almost certainly divides equally among children and leaves everything to a spouse first.
Provincial law governs validity, administration and the grounds on which a will can be challenged — so the answer can change if you move.
The Islamic position
Have the faraid shares recalculated whenever the family configuration changes; they are conditional on who survives.
Record the reasoning and the scholar consulted in a memorandum kept with the will.
No school makes writing a will a duty in itself. The four are recorded as agreed that it is recommended, and obligatory only where a debt, a trust held for someone else, or an outstanding duty would otherwise be lost. That answer assumes the fixed shares apply by themselves — which they do not in Canada, where an estate left without a will is divided by provincial statute instead, and where AMJA has resolved that a Muslim living in the West must make a bequest.
All four Sunni schools researched and sourced. Reviewed 2026-09-01. Full positions, evidence and sources — Is a Muslim obliged to write a will?.
Making an Islamic will in Canada — province by province, and what makes one valid where you live →
What to do about it
- Recalculate the shares for the new circumstances.
- Update the will with a lawyer in your province.
- Review every beneficiary designation.
- Confirm where the original is kept.
This is legal information only. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a lawyer.
Citations & sources
Every factual claim on this page traces to a source below. Details change — check the original source before relying on any figure, fee or legal position. Anything under “further reading” is related material, not a source for what is stated here.
- Surah an-Nisa 4:11 — shares of children and parents — Quran.com
- Surah an-Nisa 4:12 — shares of spouses and uterine siblings — Quran.com
- Surah an-Nisa 4:176 — the kalalah verse — Quran.com
- Succession Law Reform Act, RSO 1990, c S.26 — Government of Ontario
- Administering estates — Government of Ontario
- Beneficiary designation vs will which controls — Treadstone Law
- Conflicting wills which one governs ontario — Treadstone Law
- Will vs beneficiary designation which controls — Treadstone Law
- Rrsp vs tfsa which to use first ontario — Treadstone Law
- Wills & estates practice — Treadstone Law