In Pakistan, the inheritance rights given to women are protected under constitutional guarantees, statutory frameworks and Islamic jurisprudence. There are Quranic injunctions that establish specific shares for women heirs, with the superior courts of the country highlighting that women cannot be deprived of their lawful inheritance. However, even though there is normative clarity on the matter, there is a pervasive socio-legal argument that undermines such protections: the informal relinquishment of inheritance by women in favour of their male relatives.
Across urban and rural areas alike, daughters, sisters and mothers relinquish, ‘waive’, ‘surrender’, or even ‘gift’ their own inheritance to their male family members through statements, affidavits and family settlements. Even though these acts may seem to be voluntary, the conditions under which these actions are committed are often structured through coercion, manipulation and emotional blackmail, raising serious questions about consent and structural inequality.
The Constitution of Pakistan guarantees the right to acquire, hold and dispose of property under Articles 23 and 24, while Article 25 ensures equality before the law and prohibits discrimination based on gender. On paper, therefore, women stand on equal footing in matters of property ownership.
These constitutional rights are reinforced through judicial pronouncements emphasising that women’s inheritance rights are not mere statutory entitlements but constitutionally protected interests. Unlike various legal systems that permit broad discretion, Islamic law restricts any form of manipulation of inheritance rights by fixing shares.
Theoretically, therefore, women’s rights in Pakistan are protected both by law and by Shariah. Female heirs most often state the relinquishment of their property shares before revenue officers in favour of their male relatives. These declarations are recorded as voluntary, and mutations are sanctioned without any inquiry into the surrounding circumstances.
Even though informal waivers or relinquishments are portrayed as gestures of goodwill, family harmony or loyalty, cultural narratives reinforce the idea that daughters, once married into ‘another household’, should not claim paternal property.
What is important to understand here is that these waivers are rarely backed by any form of independent legal advice. Many women in Pakistan lack awareness of the consequences of economic relinquishment, and, unless fraud or some form of coercion is proven, the law treats these waivers as ordinary transactions.
The very system that guarantees inheritance rights for women simultaneously enables practices that erode them
One question stands at the core of this issue: when is consent truly voluntary?
Under the Contract Act 1872, consent is vitiated by coercion, undue influence, fraud or misrepresentation. Courts have set aside property transfers where dominance or exploitation was proven. The Supreme Court of Pakistan, in the case of Mst. Bibi Zubaida v. Nabi Baksh (PLD 1986 SC 344), held that where a person in a position of dominance obtains a transaction from a vulnerable party, the burden to prove voluntariness shifts to the beneficiary.
In patriarchal systems, property is largely controlled by male heirs, while women’s dependency on their biological families creates an imbalance that undermines autonomous decision-making. Courts often focus on overt coercion and therefore repeatedly fail to recognise how structural power shapes so-called voluntary waivers.
Pakistani courts have repeatedly intervened to protect women’s inheritance rights, particularly where fraud or manipulation has been demonstrated. The superior judiciary has formally recognised that inheritance under Islamic law is not a mere entitlement but a right that has been divinely ordained and cannot be defeated through manipulation.
An important development in this regard arose from the Federal Shariat Court in the case of Syeda Fouzia Jalal v State of Pakistan, where the court emphasised that women’s inheritance rights are protected under Islamic injunctions and cannot be avoided through procedural formalities that conceal injustice. The court recognised that social pressures often operate invisibly and that relinquishment deeds executed in such settings require close scrutiny. The judgement stressed that any such waiver must be absolutely voluntary, informed and free from any form of undue influence—not merely procedurally recorded.
Similarly, in his August 2025 ruling in the case of Abrar Hussain v Bibi Shahida, Justice Ather Minallah articulated a ground-breaking position: that denial of inheritance is not merely a familial dispute but a constitutional wrong that involves the responsibility of the state. He emphasised that it is the duty of the state to ensure the enforcement of women’s inheritance rights, especially where social arrangements systematically disadvantage them. By framing inheritance as a matter of public law rather than private compromise, the judgement shifts the discourse from individual fault to structural responsibility.
Despite the presence of such progressive jurisprudence, trial-level practice often remains formalistic. Relinquishment deeds are upheld on the basis that the woman appeared before a revenue officer and made a statement. Women seeking to challenge such waivers must initiate litigation against their own brothers—often the primary beneficiaries of the relinquishment—thereby risking familial rupture. Furthermore, proving coercion years after the execution of the transaction presents formidable evidentiary challenges, especially in contexts where the pressure is subtle, emotional and largely undocumented.
Subsequently, while formal remedies exist within both statutory and constitutional frameworks, their accessibility remains constrained. Although judicial recognition of structural coercion has begun to emerge at different levels, the administrative framework of inheritance law continues to favour procedural compliance over substantive equality. This gap between doctrinal protection and lived reality sustains what may be termed ‘silent disinheritance’.
The irony is simple: the very system that guarantees inheritance rights for women simultaneously enables practices that erode them.
Women’s inheritance rights in Pakistan represent a powerful convergence of constitutional principle and Islamic jurisprudence. Yet the persistence of informal waivers reveals a gap between entitlement and enforcement. By treating familial relinquishment as an ordinary transaction, the legal system overlooks the structural pressures that shape women’s decisions. Consent, divorced from context, becomes a formalistic shield for dispossession.
If inheritance rights are to function as instruments of economic security rather than symbolic entitlements, the law must recognise silent disinheritance for what it is: a patterned form of structural dispossession. Only then can constitutional equality and Islamic inheritance principles operate not as aspirational ideals but as lived realities within the family.
Until that shift occurs, women’s inheritance rights in Pakistan will continue to exist most securely in texts—constitutional, statutory and sacred—while remaining precarious in practice.