The ruling on compelling daughters to pay off their father's debts
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you and bless you, Honorable Shaykh. This is a message from our sister Fahd and her sisters from Riyadh. We sent this long recorded message to the Honorable Shaykh. They say: Peace be upon you, and Allah's mercy and blessings. I ask Allah, the Exalted and Mighty, to make your knowledge beneficial, Honorable Shaykh Salih, and to place it in your scale of good deeds. Our father passed away, and he had debts. Our six male brothers asked us, the five daughters, to pay money to settle the debts, claiming that we are employed. We are married and have family responsibilities. Our male brothers are also employed, and they have houses and properties, and they are in a better situation than we women are. When we refused, they cut us off and prevented their children and wives from speaking with us. They stopped answering our calls, and they even started plotting against us and threatening us. Some of them even have financial claims against us women, which they denied, and they threatened us in case something bad happened to us, God forbid. We know that our father (may Allah have mercy on him) used to take from our money by various means, and we gave it to him out of fear of his anger. The question asks: Is a woman religiously obligated to pay her father's debts? In our situation, are we required to give to our brothers despite their good circumstances, which are full of money? And what is the ruling on cutting ties with us for this reason?
Answer:
Their action is ignorance and injustice. It is not obligatory for you, nor for your brothers, to pay the debt on behalf of the deceased. If he left an estate, the debt is paid from it. If the deceased did not leave an estate, it is recommended (mustahabb) for his heirs or other Muslims to pay it on his behalf. This is a matter of choice, not obligation. Their treatment of you was ignorance and injustice. They should fear Allah, the Exalted and Mighty, maintain their family ties, fulfill the rights owed to their sisters, and abandon this ignorance.
May Allah reward you and bless you, Honorable Shaykh. This is a message from our sister Fahd and her sisters from Riyadh. We sent this long recorded message to the Honorable Shaykh. They say: Peace be upon you, and Allah's mercy and blessings. I ask Allah, the Exalted and Mighty, to make your knowledge beneficial, Honorable Shaykh Salih, and to place it in your scale of good deeds. Our father passed away, and he had debts. Our six male brothers asked us, the five daughters, to pay money to settle the debts, claiming that we are employed. We are married and have family responsibilities. Our male brothers are also employed, and they have houses and properties, and they are in a better situation than we women are. When we refused, they cut us off and prevented their children and wives from speaking with us. They stopped answering our calls, and they even started plotting against us and threatening us. Some of them even have financial claims against us women, which they denied, and they threatened us in case something bad happened to us, God forbid. We know that our father (may Allah have mercy on him) used to take from our money by various means, and we gave it to him out of fear of his anger. The question asks: Is a woman religiously obligated to pay her father's debts? In our situation, are we required to give to our brothers despite their good circumstances, which are full of money? And what is the ruling on cutting ties with us for this reason?
Answer:
Their action is ignorance and injustice. It is not obligatory for you, nor for your brothers, to pay the debt on behalf of the deceased. If he left an estate, the debt is paid from it. If the deceased did not leave an estate, it is recommended (mustahabb) for his heirs or other Muslims to pay it on his behalf. This is a matter of choice, not obligation. Their treatment of you was ignorance and injustice. They should fear Allah, the Exalted and Mighty, maintain their family ties, fulfill the rights owed to their sisters, and abandon this ignorance.
Source
من يجب عليه سداد ديون الميت — alfawzan.live
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.