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Is the blood money (diyah) for a person killed in a car accident to be divided among their heirs like an inheritance?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The blood money for the slain is divided among his heirs like an inheritance. This is indicated by two hadiths from Abu Dawud: The first is that Umar ibn al-Khattab recanted his prevention of a woman from receiving her husband's blood money after he was informed that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, ordered that the wife of Ushaim al-Dhababi inherit from her husband's blood money. The second is that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, ruled that blood money is an inheritance among the heirs of the slain according to their kinship, and whatever remains is for the agnates. Ibn Qudamah explicitly stated that blood money is distributed for the slain like all his other assets. The Permanent Committee for Issuing Fatwas stated that distributing blood money to non-heirs is not permissible according to Sharia, and that it is not permissible to distribute it except to the heirs of the deceased after paying off his debts and executing his will, and that the adult, mature heirs waiving a portion of their inheritance for relatives or others is permissible as an act of piety and benevolence.

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

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