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Fatwa CenterLineage and Inheritance in Cases of Disputed Paternity
Question
My mother was married to Mr. A and had four children with him. I was born in 1993 out of zina while she was still married to Mr. A. Although he was not my biological father, Mr. A accepted me and my name appeared as his child in the birth certificate and divorce deed. After divorcing Mr. A, my mother married my biological father, Mr. N, who accepted me and changed my documents to show his name. Both fathers are now deceased and my mother is alive. Under these, do I have any inheritance from Mr A
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad (ﷺ) is His Slave and Messenger.
There is no consideration given to the acknowledgment of the second man (Mr. N), due to the statement of the Prophet (ﷺ): “The child belongs to the owner of the bed, and for the adulterer is nothing but loss.” [Reported by Bukhārī and Muslim]
Accordingly, you are entitled to inherit from the first man (Mr. A), and you do not inherit from the second. This is supported by the following narration in Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, may Allaah: “Whoever commits adultery with a woman he does not own, or with the wife of another people, and she gives birth to a child, then it is not his child; he neither inherits from him nor is he inherited from.” [Ibn Ḥibbān]
Al-Nawawī 
said in his commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: “Its meaning is that if a man has a wife or a slave woman who becomes a lawful bed for him, and she gives birth within a possible time frame for the child to be his, then the child is attributed to him. The child is treated as his in all rulings, including inheritance and other legal consequences of lineage, whether the child resembles him or not. The minimum period for the possibility of attribution is six months from the time they came together.” [End quote].
The aforementioned is a ruling that applies to cases such as yours. However, matters of this nature should be referred to an Islamic court.
Allah Knows best.
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