This is legal information only. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a lawyer.
A faraid distribution gives a daughter half a son’s share. Whether that can be challenged in Prince Edward Island — and by whom — is the question every Muslim family planning an estate here should ask before signing.
The Prince Edward Island position
| Item | Prince Edward Island |
|---|---|
| Governing statute | Probate Act and Wills Act |
| Court | Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island (Estates Section) |
| Handwritten (holograph) wills | Not recognised as a general category. PEI requires a will to be in writing, signed at the foot by the testator (or by someone else in the testator's presence and by their direction), with the signature made or acknowledged before two witnesses present together, who then attest and subscribe in the testator's presence. There is only a narrow exception for a member of the Canadian Armed Forces on active service, or a mariner/seaman at sea, who may make a will by unwitnessed signed writing. Separately, a 'substantial compliance' curative provision lets the Estates Section validate a signed-but-not-fully-compliant document (which would include a signed handwritten document lacking witnesses) if it embodies genuine testamentary intent — so an informal handwritten will is not automatically valid, but is not automatically void either; it needs a court application. |
| Probate cost | Flat fees by probate-value band up to $100,000, then a modest percentage above that, with no cap: up to $10,000, $50; $10,001–$25,000, $100; $25,001–$50,000, $200; $50,001–$100,000, $400; over $100,000, $400 plus $4 for every $1,000 (or part) in excess of $100,000 — 0.4% at the margin. On a $500,000 estate that is $400 + (400 × $4) = $2,000; on a $1,000,000 estate, $400 + (900 × $4) = $4,000. This is among the lowest probate-fee regimes in the country, well below Ontario's 1.5% or Nova Scotia's ~1.7% marginal rate. |
| Spouse’s share on intestacy | PEI has NO preferential dollar share at all — unusual among the provinces checked so far, which all set some fixed amount (however small) that the spouse takes off the top. Instead, PEI's Probate Act splits the whole estate by fraction from the first dollar: with a surviving spouse and one child, the spouse takes one-half and the child one-half; with a spouse and more than one child, the spouse takes one-third and the children divide the remaining two-thirds by stocks (per stirpes); with a spouse and no issue, the spouse takes the entire estate. A surviving spouse who is cohabiting in a conjugal relationship with someone else at the intestate's death loses their share. The Act does not define 'spouse' and contains no common-law/cohabitant extension, so on its face it means a legally married spouse only. |
| Will registry | No general public will registry — but two narrower government mechanisms exist and should not be conflated with one. (1) Part VII of the Probate Act establishes a statutory registration system for 'international wills' (wills made in the special form under the Convention Providing a Uniform Law on the Form of an International Will); PEI lawyers who act on an international will must report it monthly for entry in the system. This is real, but almost no one uses the international-will form, so it does not compete with a general will-search product. (2) Separately, for $10, anyone can file and register an ordinary will with the Estates Section registry without applying for probate — but nothing in the Act allows a living testator to do this pre-death, and no PEI government source describes a facility for lodging a will for safekeeping before death, so this does not function as a pre-death findability tool either. |
| Claims against the estate | Dependants of a Deceased Person Relief Act claims — but the class of people who can claim is narrower than a plain reading of the Act's name suggests, and narrower than Nova Scotia's or New Brunswick's equivalents. 'Dependant' is limited to: the surviving spouse; a child under 18; a child 18 or over who cannot earn a livelihood because of mental or physical disability; a grandparent, parent, or descendant who was actually financially dependent on the deceased for the 3 years before death; or a divorced former spouse who was actually financially dependent on the deceased for the 3 years before death. An able-bodied independent adult child has NO claim under this Act at all. |
Who can bring a claim
- Dependants who were being supported and were not adequately provided for.
- Spouses, including through family-property entitlements that operate independently of the will.
- Adult children — in British Columbia specifically, even where independent.
Compared with British Columbia
Prince Edward Island does not have BC’s section 60 wills-variation regime, under which an independent adult child can apply to rewrite a will. The exposure here is narrower — but dependant support claims still apply.
Reducing the risk
- Record the religious reasoning in a memorandum kept with the will.
- Provide for genuine dependants adequately, whatever the fixed shares say.
- Consider lifetime gifts and designations, which are harder to disturb — but take tax advice.
- Get provincial advice before signing. This is the clause that gets litigated.
Common questions
Can a will be challenged just because it follows Islamic shares?
Not on that basis alone. Claims succeed on statutory grounds — inadequate provision for a dependant, or in BC for a spouse or child — not because a distribution is religious.
Does writing down my reasons help?
It can. A memorandum explaining the reasoning is evidence a court may weigh, though in BC the Grewal decision shows cultural or religious reasoning is not by itself decisive.
Are lifetime gifts safer than bequests?
They are generally harder to disturb, but they carry immediate tax consequences and can still be examined. Take tax and legal advice before moving assets.
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.
Legislation & government sources
- What to do when someone has died — Canada Revenue Agency
- Probate fees by province / territory — TaxTips.ca
Islamic primary sources
- Surah an-Nisa 4:11–12, 4:176 — Quran.com
- Book of Wills (Wasaya) — Sahih al-Bukhari, Sunnah.com
Demographics
- Religion by census metropolitan area, 2021 Census — Statistics Canada
Further reading — Treadstone Law
- Per stirpes distribution intestacy ontario — Treadstone Law
- Preferential share spouse intestacy ontario — Treadstone Law
- Hourly rate vs flat fee litigation ontario — Treadstone Law
- Calling witnesses small claims court ontario — Treadstone Law
- Holograph handwritten will ontario — Treadstone Law
- Wills & estates practice — Treadstone Law