Spouses, parents, daughters, and certain siblings and grandparents. They take stated fractions before anything passes to residuary heirs.
The Canadian position
Canadian intestacy has no equivalent category — it distributes by degrees of kinship, not by fixed fractions.
That structural difference is why an intestate estate almost never matches faraid even by accident.
The Islamic position
The ashab al-furud take defined fractions drawn from Surah an-Nisa. Who qualifies depends on who else survives.
Exclusion rules mean a surviving son can remove several people from the calculation entirely.
Six relatives can never be excluded from an estate outright — the father, the mother, the husband, the wife, the son and the daughter — and the Kuwaiti Mawsu’a records that by ijma‘. Everyone else can be. Exclusion comes in two grades: hajb hirman, being shut out completely, and hajb nuqsan, being moved from a larger fraction to a smaller one. Three rules do most of the work: a relative who reaches the deceased through another heir is excluded while that heir lives; the nearer of the same kind excludes the more remote; and the stronger blood tie excludes the weaker.
All four Sunni schools researched and sourced. Reviewed 2026-09-01. Full positions, evidence and sources — Hajb — when does one heir shut another out?.
Related madhhab issue: What a husband and a wife inherit.
Related madhhab issue: What a father and a mother inherit.
Related madhhab issue: The two-to-one ratio between a son and a daughter.
Making an Islamic will in Canada — province by province, and what makes one valid where you live →
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
- Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 85: Laws of Inheritance (Faraid) — Sunnah.com
- Sahih Muslim, Book of Inheritance — Sunnah.com
- Succession Law Reform Act, RSO 1990, c S.26 — Government of Ontario
- Administering estates — Government of Ontario
- Half siblings intestacy ontario — Treadstone Law
- What is preferential share ontario intestacy — Treadstone Law
- Preferential share spouse intestacy ontario — Treadstone Law
- Adopted children inheritance intestacy ontario — Treadstone Law
- Wills & estates practice — Treadstone Law