857 - Issue: He said: (And likewise, if he acknowledges a debt against his father, he is bound by a portion of the debt equivalent to his inheritance.)

The sum of this is that if an heir acknowledges a debt against the one from whom he inherited, his acknowledgement is accepted without any disagreement known to us. This debt attaches to the estate of the deceased, just as it would if the deceased had acknowledged it before his death. If he did not leave an estate, the heir is not bound by anything, because he is not obligated to pay his [the deceased's] debt if he [the deceased] were alive and bankrupt, so likewise [it is the same] if he is deceased. If he left an estate, the debt attaches to it. If the heir wishes to surrender it [the estate] for the debt, he is not bound by anything else, and if he wishes to extract it [the estate from the debt] and pay the debt from his own wealth, he may do so, and he is bound by the lesser of the two amounts: its value or the amount of the debt, in the position of the one who committed an offense (jani).

If the heir is a single person, his ruling is what we have mentioned. If they are two or more, and the debt is established by the acknowledgement of the deceased, by evidence, or by the acknowledgement of all the heirs, it is likewise. If the heirs choose to take the estate and pay the debt from their own wealth, then upon each of them is [the obligation to pay] from the debt in proportion to his inheritance. If one of them acknowledges [a debt], he is bound by a portion of the debt in proportion to his inheritance, and the choice is his whether to surrender his share for the debt or to extract it. If he assesses it from the debt, and they are two, he is bound by half, and if they are three, he is bound by the third. This is the opinion of al-Nakha'i, al-Hasan, al-Hakam, Ishaq, Abu 'Ubayd, Abu Thawr, and al-Shafi'i in one of his two opinions. The proponents of reason (Ashab al-Ra'y) said: He is bound by the entire debt, or the entirety of his inheritance. This is the latter of the two opinions of al-Shafi'i, to which he returned after his saying was like our saying, because the debt attaches to his estate, so the heir does not deserve from it except what remains of the debt, due to the saying of God Almighty: {after [the fulfillment of] any bequest he [may have] made or debt} (1). And because he says: What the denier took, he took (2) without entitlement, so he is an usurper, and thus the debt attaches to what remains of the estate, just as if a stranger had usurped it.

As for us, he does not deserve more than half of the inheritance, so he is not bound by more than half of the debt, as if his brother had acknowledged it. And because it is an acknowledgement that attaches to his share and the share of his brother, so nothing is required of him except what pertains to him.