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Is it permissible for children to place legal restrictions on their father due to his irresponsible handling of shared assets, despite lacking legal proof? What is the Islamic ruling on this matter?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

"Honoring parents is one of the greatest acts of worship, and disobedience to them is one of the greatest sins. Children placing their father under guardianship is disobedience and injustice, unless he is foolish or insane, or if he has debts that his wealth is insufficient to cover, in which case the creditors have the right to request guardianship. The sons have the right to prevent their father from disposing of their own wealth if they can. If the father is in need, they must give him from their wealth an amount sufficient to cover his needs. If the father denies the wealth of his sons that is in his possession and they have no proof of it, they have the right to take it or its equivalent without his knowledge, and this is called the issue of ad-dhafar (taking what one is entitled to covertly), the origin of which is the hadith of Hind bint 'Utbah.

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Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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