Mohammad Y. Q. The Legislative Policy of Defining Inheritance: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Inheritance is an innate system that responds to the requirements of human instinct, which makes a person naturally inclined to have his material and moral effects transmitted after him to his successors, whether a son, grandson, or any relative. The source of this may be his feeling that these people are an extension of his life after him. This innate tendency has been approved by various laws in history until today. It is a just, precise and accurate system established by the wise Legislator in the succession of people from one another in money and a legitimate way of obtaining it. The system of inheritance has been distinguished. In Islam, it is the most just and wisest system because it agrees with human nature, by achieving individual ownership and the freedom to benefit from it, and there is no legislation prior to or subsequent to Islam that has reached a level of justice with man as is the case in the Islamic system. The ruling on inheritance is certain if the reasons for it are available, its conditions and pillars are fulfilled, and its impediments are absent. Inheritance is the jurisprudential rules and mathematical controls by which the share of each heir is known, and therefore it is a compulsory succession for the heir in the property of his inheritor or in a right subject to succession. The importance of this knowledge is highlighted among the sciences because it is half of knowledge and the first knowledge that is quickly forgotten, so I wanted to contribute, even if only a small part, to preserving a portion of this knowledge, even if only for a while, and because of the many urgings of the Prophet {peace and blessings be upon him} to learn and teach it.