I had a question recently from a reader (and not for the first time) on what would be an inappropriate way for Muslims couples to own a home.  It may surprise many that I actually change the form of home ownership for most of my clients.

You can always own a property individually, that means one person owns it.  That individual does a Trust-Based Islamic Inheritance Trust Plan and it passes to the Islamic heirs.  I have to note that just because a deed says the property is owned individually that a court will accept this as fact if there is a dispute.

The question usually has to do with joint ownership of property, where a husband and wife both own the property.  The underlying question when owning property together: Can the partial or concurrent owner can do an Inheritance plan that distributes that person’ property based on the Islamic Rules of Inheritance?

I will not use this post to discuss the other benefits or drawbacks of owning property one way versus the other, and only address the Islamic Inheritance aspects:

Community Property does this, since the 50% (the only percentage one person can own) can be distributed based on Islamic Rules of Inheritance.  This is also true for Tenancy in Common, which is a method of ownership where a person may own an unequal share, is also fine from an Inheritance perspective.

Avoid owning property as “community property with right of survivorship.”  You should also avoid owning property as “joint tenants” or “tenancy by the entirety.”  Many people like the later because of the asset protection benefits (it does not exist in California and several other states) – but it’s inappropriate for Muslims, so avoid it.

These forms of ownership will pass along all assets to the surviving spouse automatically, which I should remind you, is bad.

Of course even if you own it correctly, it would be foolish to not have an Islamic Inheritance plan along with ownership, since you will have no control over distribution and injustices can still occur.