Last Saturday I attended this course on Business Wills Planning. Having no prior knowledge on how Business wills works, so this is very much a new thing to me.

However before we go into business wills, we need to know these important terms/subjects first. 

1) Faraidh (Wealth Distribution after Death)
2) The Hiba ( The Gift ) 
3) The Will

Faraidh is actually a hukum which we need to abide in accordance to Islamic Law. It is how wealth is distributed to your family members upon death. If one does not follow those rules now, they are answerable to that in the day after. 

The Hiba – is a gift to the ones that you wish give the assets to during your lifetime not upon death. This cannot be willed and and cannot be wait upon death. It must be given when that person is alive.

The Will – the Will or the Wasiat ( In Malay ) is a written agreement that so and so will receive the assets upon death. However this may not be Syariah Compliance and only if all members in the family agreed upon it then it can be executed. So in other words, the one dying cannot just state that he wants this and that. To comply with the Syariah Law, all members must agree to those terms.

After a whole day of sitting down in a course full of Asatizahs and Lawyers, its kind of fun to see adults debating and questioning each other if this is valid or not cos at the end of the day is it FAIR for those who are receiving it? 

Having this very surface knowledge brought about questions on why is this like this and that. In fact there is no certainty to it. It seems that we have to go into deeper to learn this and understand further why the Faraidh is as such and so on. 

And mind you every individual family is unique and there is no one way solution to everything, hence it takes enormous planning in your lifetime.

So for example.

You have 3 million in assets. 

As based on Faraidh Law, if you did not give away your assets in your lifetime, your assets will be distributed according the percentages that is stated in the Quran ( Allah’s know all and there is a reason for it ).

Hence if you think that this person does not deserve the assets that you own, then decide to give it away when you are alive as a “Hiba”. Say $2 million to your daughter.  If you do this, no one can contest you because you are giving it away when you are still concious. Note that you need to be concious and sane to do this else it will be invalid. Then the rest will be distributed according to the faraidh.

However the case above sounds very ideal. In fact it can develop complications when there are no Sons around or when we talked about Royalties and Passive Income. How then does the income that still pours in after death will be in good use and fully utilize for the good of the family and community?

I will leave that to another day. Something for you to ponder on. How are your assets going to be distributed?

• Faraidh (Basic)
• What would you do with your first million..
• WOW – Wealth on Wealth
• I did it again..
• Answering to a question