A SIMULATION, WITH THE ASSUMPTIONS IN VIEW
Explore how inheritance and mehr change the wealth held by men and women. Follow inherited wealth through successive generations, using Australian wealth and mortality benchmarks.
Ready to simulate 10,000 families.
Illustrative model · published benchmarks and explicit assumptions
AFTER MEHR AND INHERITANCE
Total net wealth includes existing assets
and inheritance, after mehr obligations.
ONLY THE ESTATES TRANSFERRED
SAME FAMILIES, SAME DEATHS
Percentage-point change in women’s final wealth share compared with no mehr.
Death selection reflects the chosen mortality model, representative ages and generation sizes.
LOOK INSIDE THE SIMULATION
Details show the first 100 families. Every simulated family contributes to the totals above.
Deceased Inherits Amounts show inheritance received.
UNDERSTANDING THE RULES
Mehr and inheritance are separate financial rights. This overview explains the Sunni Hanafi approach used in this simulation; Islamic schools and national laws can differ.
Mehr (also written mahr) is an obligation owed by the husband to the wife through marriage. The agreed payment can be immediate, deferred, or split between the two. It belongs to her. Qur'an 4:4 permits her to waive some voluntarily; the husband cannot simply cancel it.
Marriage does not automatically combine the spouses' property. A wife's earnings, gifts, mehr and inheritance remain her property. Only the deceased person's own assets and rights enter their estate.
If the husband dies owing mehr, the unpaid amount is a debt against his estate, settled before inheritance is distributed. The wife can also inherit from the remainder. If she dies first, her unpaid mehr claim forms part of her estate and passes to her heirs; it does not disappear.
Dar Al-Ifta: deferred mehr · If the wife dies first, pp. 35–36 · Qur'an 4:12
Inheritance combines prescribed fractions with rules for distributing what remains. Spouses, parents, children and sometimes other relatives can inherit. Their presence can change another heir's share or exclude a more distant relative. A son receives twice a daughter's share when they inherit together. Other relationships have different rules: for example, when the deceased leaves a son, each surviving parent has a one-sixth share. There is no single male-to-female ratio for every estate.
Qur'an 4:11 · 4:12 · 4:176
Pay reasonable funeral and burial costs.
Settle outstanding debts, including any unpaid mehr owed by the deceased.
Under the usual Sunni Hanafi rule, a bequest to a non-heir may use up to one-third of what remains after expenses and debts. A bequest to an heir, or an excess over one-third, needs valid consent from the affected adult heirs after death. A minor's share cannot be surrendered by consent.
Distribute the remaining estate among the eligible heirs.
Order of estate distribution · Hanafi bequest limits and consent
This tool applies a limited Sunni Hanafi model to synthetic families. It assumes mehr is fully collectible and sets other debts, funeral costs and bequests to zero. Results depend on the family, wealth and death assumptions; they are not a universal Islamic wealth ratio or a calculation for a real person’s estate.
Successive generations. A founding couple and its initial adult children start with the selected wealth. Both parents in each cohort die before the next cohort's succession round. All children are alive when their parents' round begins. Inherited balances carry forward; they are never reset to an ABS median. Continuing descendants marry unrelated outside partners, whose assets are recorded as an inflow. Later descendants start with zero own wealth. There are no earnings, consumption or investment returns.
Inheritance scope. Earlier parent and grandparent cohorts have already died. Each deceased parent has living children. The model considers the surviving spouse, children, full siblings and eligible male relatives connected through the paternal line, returning any otherwise unallocated surplus under the scoped Hanafi rules. Incoming spouses' relatives outside the modeled dynasty are absent. Half siblings, remarriage, polygamy and childless couples are excluded. Hanafi heir priority ↗ · Sisters with daughters ↗
Mortality. In succession mode, parental death ages are drawn from the ABS remaining-life probabilities, conditional on survival to the selected parent age. Death order determines who is alive to inherit. Younger-cohort deaths during that round are excluded, and the next cohort starts only after the previous one has passed. This is a stylized succession model, not an annual population forecast. The same 2022–24 Australian life table is held constant across future generations. Beyond age 100, the age-100 annual death probability is held constant; this tail is a modeling assumption, not a published ABS forecast.
Single-death comparison. The alternative snapshot keeps three generations alive and chooses exactly one death per family. ABS mode normalizes each person's odds, q / (1 − q), conditional on exactly one annual death under independent individual probabilities. Optional generation multipliers modify those weights.
Wealth data. Australia uses ABS 2019–20 household medians by age and household type. Couples share one household amount equally. Initial adult children use lone-person medians, assuming independent households. New spouses use half the couple-only household median at the younger age. Equal ownership is an assumption. These historical figures include superannuation and property; treating all net wealth as distributable is a simplification, not an Australian probate calculation. No 2026 revaluation is invented. Pakistan retains the clearly labeled age-45 proxy.
Mehr. Each marriage transfers the selected absolute amount from husband to wife. The model requires the husband to have sufficient assets and treats the amount as fully collectible. Other debts, funeral costs, bequests, taxes, maintenance and marriage expenses are set to zero. The Australian A$3,000 default is a recorded study example, not a national median.
Scale and precision. Families branch in full; they are not replaced by one selected heir. A computation limit protects very large family-count/generation combinations. Headline totals use every completed starting family; downloadable details contain the first 100 only. Assigning group medians does not reproduce within-group wealth inequality, and the generated family sizes do not reproduce Australia's full population.
A fixed seed reproduces the same scenario.