Chapter: Rectification, Successive Inheritances, and the Partitioning of Estates

When the portion assigned to a group fails to divide evenly among them, rectify the problem by multiplying the original denominator—together with any ʿawl (augmentation) if it has occurred—by their head-count whenever that number is relatively prime to the existing shares. If their number shares a common divisor with the shares, then multiply only by the concordant factor, such as one-third and the like. Whatever figure results becomes the new, sound denominator, and the share that had belonged to the whole group now devolves upon each individual member—or upon the concordant portion, as the case may be.

Section

If a person dies and his estate remains undistributed until some of his heirs die, and the surviving heirs inherit those deceased heirs in the same way as at first—for example, brothers inheriting one another—then apportion the estate among the heirs who are still alive.

But if the heirs of each deceased heir inherit no one but him—for instance, brothers whose heirs are their own sons—first rectify the original estate, then divide the share of each deceased among the heirs of his particular sub-estate, correcting any fractional remainder as explained earlier.

And if they do not inherit the second deceased in the same manner as they inherited the first, then rectify the original estate and divide—