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Question:
Assalaamu ‘alaykum.
Would children still have the right to inherit should their father pass away even if their father has chosen to relinquish his parental rights and responsibilities in South African childrens court ?
While there is no connection with their father or his family.
Answer:
As salām ʿalaikum wa raḥmatullāhī wa barakātuhu
In the Name of Allāh, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Sister in Islām,
Allāh Taʿālā says in the Holy Qur’ān:
ءَابَآؤُكُمْ وَأَبْنَآؤُكُمْ لَا تَدْرُونَ أَيُّهُمْ أَقْرَبُ لَكُمْ نَفْعًۭا ۚ فَرِيضَةًۭ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيمًا حَكِيمًۭا
You do not know who, out of your fathers and your sons, is closer to you in benefiting (you). (These fixed shares) are determined by Allāh. Surely, Allāh is All-Knowing, All-Wise. [Sūrah al-Nisā’: 11]
This verse impresses upon us that the shares for children and parents have been determined by Allāh Almighty Himself in His infinite wisdom because He is Wise and He knows everything. The shares fixed have great considerations behind them. If the distribution of inheritance was left to your opinion, you would have made beneficialness the criterion of such distribution. But who will be the best to receive or deliver real benefit is something which would have been difficult for you to ascertain with any measure of certainty. Therefore, ‘nearness in kinship’ was preferred to ‘being beneficial’ as the criterion of the injunction.
This verse of the Holy Qur’ān clearly declares that the shares of inheritance determined by Allāh ‘Almighty are settled injunctions from Him. Nobody has any right to enforce opinion or to increase or decrease its stipulations. These should be accepted whole-heartedly. This command from everyone’s Creator and Master is based on what is wise and beneficial for human beings. There is no aspect of benefit outside the expanse of His knowledge and there is no command He gives bereft of some or the other element of wisdom. Man cannot, all by himself, recognize his gain and loss in the real sense. If this question of the distribution of inheritance was left to man’s personal opinion, it was certain that man would not have decided correctly because of his limitations in understanding and, as a result of which, lack of moderation and justice would have affected the distribution of inheritance. So, Allāh Almighty, in His most exalted majesty, took this responsibility in His hands so that justice and equity reign supreme in the distribution of property and the capital left by the deceased circulates in the hands of competent inheritors in a manner which is just and equitable.
Accordingly, the children still have the right to inherit should their father pass away even if their father has chosen to relinquish his parental rights and responsibilities in South African children’s court and even if there is no connection with their father or his family.
And Allāh Taʿālā knows best.
Maʿāriful Qur’ān — Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ (1396 AH) — vol. 2 pg. 344.