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Adoption is Haraam and has nothing to do with inheritance

Question

Aslam o Alaikum Sir,
My question is that I adopted one boy in 1982 and make his passport to join me in Saudi Arabia with my name and also adopted one girl from my real brother same situation of her passport also. Boy is married and living now in home country while girl is studying both are under my name. While I am always calling since beginning as brother & sister. I have only one house. Two Brother & One sister they their own property. Only one brother living with me from the beginning when I bought this house. Kindly your advice how to distribute my property while my wife & these two (kids) boy & giril (adopted) are living in second portion together.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

The boy and girl whom you adopted do not inherit anything from your wealth, and adopting them under your name is something forbidden. We have already issued Fataawa 84422 and 82371 clarifying that adoption is forbidden in Islam and that the adopted person has no right in the inheritance of the person who adopted him. However, it is permissible to gift him/her something or make a will for him/her.

Moreover, you should know, dear brother, that the boy whom you adopted is a non-Mahram to your wife and it is not permissible for him to stay in seclusion with her or to shake hands with her. He is also a non-Mahram to your niece [daughter of your brother]; this is of course if there is no reason which renders him a Mahram in both cases.

As regards how your inheritance should be divided, then whoever dies and leaves behind a wife, two brothers and a sister, all of whom are full brothers and full sister, or all of them are from the father’s side only, and he did not leave any other heir, then his wife gets a fourth of the inheritance and the remaining should be divided between his two brothers and his sister, the male twice the share of the female.

Furthermore, now you should not preoccupy yourself about how your inheritance will be divided after your death, because it might be that the situation would change and one of the heirs would die before you or that you will have another heir born to you. What is important is that you should endeavour to correct the mistake which you made, and change the family lineage of the children whom you adopted in official papers by naming them after their fathers.

Allaah Knows best.

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