We have enumerated in a clear register (12) (Yasin 36:12).

Scholarly disagreement:
The jurists have differed over the validity of making a bequest in favor of an heir when the remaining heirs approve it.

1. The majority maintain that such a bequest is valid if the heirs give their consent, basing themselves on the additional wording, “except if the heirs so will,” whose chain of transmission is sound.

2. Shaykh Taqi al-Din said: A bequest to an heir is not valid without the heirs’ approval. In al-Rawḍ he writes: “No bequest to an heir is permissible except with the permission of the heirs after the testator’s death, because the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘There is no bequest for an heir.’ If the heirs approve, it is executed, for their approval amounts to upholding the statement of an heir.”

3. Shaykh ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad stated: “The scholars agree that there is no bequest for an heir unless the heirs, being mature and competent, approve it. The jurists made its permissibility contingent on their approval, for the prohibition exists to protect their right; once they consent, the bequest is carried out because the right is theirs.”

4. The Ẓāhirī school holds that a bequest to an heir is invalid even if the heirs approve; their approval carries no legal weight.

5. Shaykh al-Albani, commenting on the report containing the phrase “except if the heirs so will,” said that, according to hadith methodology, it should be deemed munkar (unacceptable).

6. Concerning the hadith “There is no bequest for an heir,” al-Shafiʿi affirmed in al-Umm that its wording is mutawātir and that the entire community has accepted it.

7. Al-Bukhari gave it the heading, “Chapter: No bequest for an heir,” even though the report itself did not meet his stringent conditions.

8. Shaykh al-Islam remarked that the Ummah is unanimously agreed upon it.

9. Al-Majd said: “All the scholars from whom knowledge has reached us are agreed that the Prophet ﷺ said…”