The crux of the dispute is this: once the excess beyond the lawful one-third has lapsed, must it likewise be disregarded when the estate is apportioned, just as it was voided in itself by the heirs’ renunciation?

Those who hold that it is void in itself yet still figures in the division—because the allocation remained undifferentiated—say: the estate should be divided into fifths.

Those who maintain that any consideration of it is void, as though the excess had been expressly specified, say: the remainder is to be divided equally.

Among their purely verbal questions in this chapter is the following: if a person bequeaths “a portion” of his property while he possesses assets he knows of and other assets of which he is unaware, Mālik holds that the bequest applies only to what he knew, whereas al-Shāfiʿī applies it to both sets of assets.

The basis of their disagreement is whether the term “property,” as uttered by the testator, encompasses both the known and the unknown assets, or only the former. The well-known view reported from Mālik is that a slave designated as mudabbar is charged to both sets of assets when his value cannot be met from the property the owner knew about.

This chapter contains many subsidiary rulings, all of which return to these three kinds. There is, however, no disagreement that a man may, in his will, appoint a guardian over his children after his death, and that this constitutes a partial form of succession, akin on a smaller scale to the comprehensive succession for which the Imām may designate a successor.