thousand riyals. He then dies, and we find that his estate is nine thousand riyals. It is known that these gifts exceed one-third of the estate, so what should we do?

We say: We give to the first recipient, then the next. Thus, we give the first one thousand riyals, the second two thousand riyals, and the third receives nothing. This is because the estate is nine thousand riyals, one-third of which is three thousand; and the gifts to the first and second recipients have exhausted that three thousand, leaving nothing for the third.

The reason is that a gift becomes binding upon receipt, and the recipient acquires ownership upon receiving it. Thus, once we give the first one thousand and the second two thousand, their ownership of what they were given becomes established. The third then comes after the one-third limit has already been exceeded, and so he is given nothing.

An example of a bequest is a man who bequeaths one thousand riyals to one person, two thousand to another, and three thousand to a third. He then dies, and we find that his estate is nine thousand riyals. Here, the bequests exceed one-third: one-third is three thousand, while the bequests amount to six thousand riyals. Therefore, the bequests must be reduced to one-third, and the reduction is shared by all of them. We do not give priority to the first over the second, as we did in the case of gifts. Rather, we treat them equally and say: They have been bequeathed six thousand, but are entitled to only three thousand. We therefore compare three thousand to six thousand, which is one-half. Each person is thus given half of what was bequeathed to him, because the ratio of one-third to the total bequests is one-half. So, the recipient of one thousand is given five hundred, the recipient of two thousand is given one thousand, and the recipient of three thousand is given one thousand five hundred. The total is three thousand, which is one-third.

The reason for this is that these beneficiaries acquire ownership of the bequest only after