Partnerships, are they allowed in Islam?

[JIHADI-JEDI]

Say if two people lived together (non-sexual), could be an elderly parent and child. Or two sisters or whatever, I am asking if two people who spend a lot of time together can they have some kind of 'legal-binding' under Islam which can take care of things like inheritance etc - similar to marriage?

[mareyah]

Say if two people lived together (non-sexual), could be an elderly parent and child. Or two sisters or whatever, I am asking if two people who spend a lot of time together can they have some kind of 'legal-binding' under Islam which can take care of things like inheritance etc - similar to marriage?

that's interesting. Anyone know the answer to this?

[UsuallySilent]

The following may be of interest -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7373302.stm

Islamically - you could leave a will, but the issue with wills is that unless, your parents, siblings, etc. are all dead, you may find that only a 1/3 can be given away freely - with the rest already decided for you, from an Islamic perspective that is.

For a person, whose parents are deceased and had no siblings - I suspect the estate can be distributed entirely as desired. However, if there were siblings but now deceased - it is probable that the their share will pass onto the offspring.

But wills can be revoked - unbeknown to the would be inheritor - often with disastrous consequences - not to mention costly.

In the example you give - elderly parent & child, if the matter is left till death, then the shares of the estate are "pre-allocated" and nothing from an Islamic perspective can be done. Unless the child is an only child - in which the entire estate should be theirs. I can't see the elderly parent's nephews\nieces\etc having a right to any share.

However, if the child is not an only child - then everything will be divided up according to these prescribed rules.

If the parent would like to leave everything to one child - it would have to be done prior to death so as not to count as inheritance.

Take for example an elderly parent with several sons - all except 1 have left home. The stay at home son(possibly with wife, etc) assumes responsibility of the house - bills etc. The other sons visit occasionally, but bear no financial\other burden.

Assuming the house (in the name of the elderly parent) to be worth 100k pounds at the time the son took responsibility and control.

Over the years the house has been modernised, updated, son paid off the mortgage, etc. and the value is now 200k - ten years later.

Now if the elderly parent was to die - assuming that there were 4 sons. In most cases, these brothers would expect 50k each from the estate and it would be up to the 1 son to finance it how he wished. That I would suspect would be a fairly common response.

A more equitable solution would probably be closer to 25k to each brother - i..e what the house was worth when the son took responsibility and control of the household.

To prevent such a son being made homeless - such a parent could sell the house to the son for an agreed sum (needn't be market value) but legally maintaining a life interest in the property. There are various legal means of doing this.

As long as the value of the estate is below Inheritance Tax thresholds - the life interest shouldn't be an issue.

Sorry - if it's a bit of a ramble, but the usual Pakistani mentality of everyone paying into the pot (very unevenly) and when the parent dies, everybody demanding their "rightful" share, but having made little contribution. Thus, leaving some rather angry individuals left with not a lot.


Pakistani - that's no reference to the OP, just the community where I've seen all sorts of Inheritance headaches.