Answered by Mufti Yusuf Mullan
My parents have been fighting since I can remember. The cause of most of their arguing is our house. My mother was married before and had four surviving sons from her marriage. Her husband passed away. The house was under her name. All four orphan brothers were under the age of seven. The house from what I understand had no mortgage. When my mother married again to my father he requested my mum to put the ownership of the property half under his name, and he put a mortgage on the property. My mum claims she was deceived for she was not aware of the mortgage until recently. My father refuses to transfer the property under her name claiming that the property is his. My mother accuses my dad of profiting from the inheritance of orphans. My father has hardly worked to support us. The money he has received is from social security benefits. My mother has worked instead. Is my father in the wrong? Who is the rightful owner of the property? How is it to be divided? One of my orphan brothers has recently passed away, that leads to three orphan brothers and from my father and mum there are 3 of us i.e. 2 sisters and 1 brother. Did my father have the right to put the property of orphans under his name?
Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullah,
Your father is a wrongdoer (dhalim) in this situation. Your mother is under no expectation to give up the house. She may resort to all permissible means necessary to re-obtain the house from your father. Suppressing the wealth of orphans is a very grave act of oppression in Islam.
As to how the house is to be divided, the portion of it which was under the ownership of the deceased father is the right of your mother and her three sons from that marriage. For an exact calculation, please submit details of other immediate relatives of the deceased, such as mother or father, who were alive at the time of his death.
And Allah alone gives success.