Redistributing an estate that was not distributed according to Shariah
Q: I have a question regarding inheritance. Me and my siblings are in total 8; 3 brothers and 5 sisters.
After the death of my mother, who passed away 10 years ago, me and my sister didn't receive anything from my mum's inheritance because we live abroad. The rest of them divided my mum's stuff according to their needs. The amount of stuff everyone took wasn't according to the Shariah, they didn't consider it while dividing.
Another problem is that my mum had some jewellery, but my late father told all of us that he didn't want us to take anything from it and decided to give everything to our older brother because he's the one that took care of my parents.
Now I'm studying Quran with tafseer and I got to know that what we did was not according to Quran and Sunnah. How can we solve this matter ? It's been 10 years from that moment and it's not possible for us to gather my mum's stuff anymore because some of it got sold.
A: Work out the original estate as to what was the worth at the time of death whether in cash, kind or property. The right thing should be to redistribute it. If any of the heirs had more than what he or she was entitled to then they should return the additional amount to the estate and the estate will then redistribute it to the heirs who were deprived of their shares. The father's instruction that the jewellery be given to the elder brother is not valid. That should be ignored.
And Allah Ta'ala (الله تعالى) knows best.
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