The ruling on the ownership of gold that a mother buys for her daughters and its zakah

Question : A woman asks: Is the gold that a mother buys for her daughters owned by them or by her? Is it permissible for her to take it and sell it? And if she has gold and her daughters have gold, is it combined for the purpose of zakah, or what is the case?

Answer : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. The gold that a mother gives to her daughters, if it is on the basis of a loan, it is her property; it is combined with the gold she has, and she pays its zakah, and she may take it back whenever she wishes. However, if it is on the basis of a gift, it belongs to the daughters, and each daughter’s property is specific to her; it is not combined with the other’s for completing the nisab. Accordingly, if there are five daughters, each of whom owns half a nisab, and there are five of them, if we looked at their total, we would say they have two and a half nisabs, so zakah would be due on them. But we do not look at that; each one is separate from the other, so there is no zakah on them, because each one owns only half a nisab, so there is no zakah on her.