Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
As for parents’ gifts to their children during their life, that should be equally granted. After parents’ death, the estate must be divided according the inheritance rulings of Shari`ah.
In his response to your question, Prof. Dr. Monzer Kahf, Professor of Islamic Finance and Economics at Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, states:
You confused me saying gift then you said with their will. Is it that mother gave you and your brother these 2 lots of land or they wrote a last will in which they mentioned the same?
A gift in lifetime from a parent to a child is governed by the Hadith of An-Nu`man when his father wanted to give him a gift without giving similar gifts to all his siblings. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) rejected to be a witness to this unjust gift. That was after he asked the father whether he gave similar gifts to all other children.
This action was called by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) as injustice. This is why the rule in Shari`ah, as adopted by majority of schools of fiqh, is that gifts in the lifetime of parents must be equal regardless of the gender, males and females.
In case of a gift in a last will, it is not valid to any heir; you both are potential heirs of your parents. This means that inheritance rule must be applied when any one of them dies. The rule then is two shares to a male (son) and one share to a female (daughter).
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.