Check how title is held. Joint tenancy passes by survivorship and leaves the estate under Canadian law. Whether it also leaves the tarikah is unsettled — MUIS Singapore says yes, and has changed its position three times; no other fiqh body appears to have ruled. If you want the house to follow the shares, hold it as tenants in common.
The Canadian position
Check how title is held. Joint tenancy passes by survivorship and leaves the estate under Canadian law. Whether it also leaves the tarikah is unsettled — MUIS Singapore says yes, and has changed its position three times; no other fiqh body appears to have ruled. If you want the house to follow the shares, hold it as tenants in common.
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.
RRSPs, TFSAs, joint tenancy and beneficiary designations are all newer than the four schools, so this is not a madhhab difference and we have built no four-school table for it. What the schools do agree is the test: the tarikah is what the deceased owned at the moment of death, not how the asset moved afterwards. Applying that test to Canadian instruments is a present-day question, and named bodies reach opposite results — AMJA and Qatar’s Islamweb keep an earned plan in the estate; Singapore’s MUIS treats a nomination as a completed lifetime gift. No source on either side reasons from probate.
No school ruled on this instrument; named present-day bodies differ. Reviewed 2026-09-01. Full positions, evidence and sources — Assets that pass outside the estate — are they part of the tarikah?.
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
- Principal residence exemption — Canada Revenue Agency
- Joint tenancy vs tenants in common ontario — Treadstone Law
- Joint tenancy vs tenants in common ontario 2 — Treadstone Law
- Joint tenancy vs tenancy in common ontario — Treadstone Law
- What appears on ontario title — Treadstone Law
- Wills & estates practice — Treadstone Law