Murdering the Testator an Impediment to Being a Beneficiary of the Will; A Model of Proportionality of Ancillary Punishments and the Extent of Liability In The Light Of the Spirit of Law

For some criminal acts, the Holy Legislator (God as the law-giver) has mentioned some ancillary punishments in addition to the principal punishment. Murder is considered as an impediment to inheriting anything out of the estate of the murdered person if it is deliberate or out of their blood money(Diyah) if it is not deliberate, i.e. manslaughter. The idea that murder prevents a murderer, just like the case of inheriting, from being a beneficiary of the murdered person’s will is in need of jurisprudential and legal analysis. The issue lacks any explicit statement in our sources of Islamic narrations and legal articles, hence it was tried to find the taste of the legislator by examining similar subjects such as the murderer heir, the validity of the content of a will in case of suicide committed by the testator, or a liberated slave who is the murderer of his/her master and the spirit of the law was utilized for discovering the superior opinion in legal doctrine. Detailed examination based on the chronological order of making a will and the oppressive intentional deadly act, as well as detailed inspection based on the ability to modify the will after a deadly act, leads us to this conclusion that in case of any deadly act by the legatee after a will is made and also of the inability of the testator or his/her lack of opportunity to modify the content of the will after the deadly act, the legatee is sentenced to testamentary deprivation.