Daily Trust - the online edition

In a lot of cultures, the issue of inheritance is a contentious one, especially in a monogamous family where co-wives compete in having children in order to garner most of the inheritance, in the event of the husband’s death. It is well-known that since in Islam a boy gets double share, or put another way, a girl gets half of what he gets, some women that have more sons are proud while those that have more daughters are not too happy, because their children’s’ share will be small.

Anyway, just recently I was discussing with a friend about a family that inherited millions of naira, when she said that men saw their wives and children as their worst enemies, because in the event of their death the wives and children will naturally inherit their wealth.

But I pointed out that they shouldn’t see them as their enemies; in any case, who would they have preferred to inherit them? Do they want to leave their family in poverty or what? This, of course is assuming that that husband is wealthy, since most of the competition and rivalry I mentioned earlier happen more in a wealthy household. Besides, if you are living from hand to mouth, where you send your children to hawk to contribute to feeding, because your husband brings little or nothing home, you wouldn’t compete in having children. After all what is there to inherit? Probably debts.

If you talk of inheritance, people assume that it is referring only to when the husband dies, as if women don’t die too. In fact, some that are wealthy will be inherited by their husbands and children. In some cases, where the couple or the woman is childless and the inheritance is supposed to be shared among the husband and the deceased parents or brothers and sisters, the husband will not give them anything. And after some quarrels, some will give up.

One man once told me in derision that women were so obsessed with inheritance that they wanted their husbands to die! This is outrageous, because no matter how much a woman may like money, I don’t think she would want her children to become orphans, and in the case where she doesn’t have children, I still don’t think she would want him to die just to inherit his wealth.

Nonetheless, we cannot ignore some instances where we hear that some wealthy people’s children have become way ward and notorious that they want their fathers to die. According to such stories, some of these fathers are said to be very mean, that the children even have to steal from them, while some are not mean at all, but the children are just anxious to see them out of their way and get what they did not work for.

The issue of inheritance is one that should cause profound sadness to the inheritors, because it is obtained through the loss of a loved one, which is why some people cry bitterly when the inheritance is being divided to them. They will think little of their share no matter how much, depending on how wealthy the deceased was, because they are just material things that may end, besides, they have lost a human being.

Though some families are broken because of misunderstanding in sharing the inheritance, which is too bad. It is such people that are accused of being ‘happy’ to get inheritance. And also the case of merry widow whereby the widow suddenly starts being flashy and living an extravagant life, which was not the case when her husband was alive.

Therafter, as much as we would like to live forever, we will not, as death must surely come when our time comes, so instead of waiting for inheritance, the best legacy is to train our children to become good people that can take care of themselves and pray for us, as some that inherited a lot fell into squander mania and later regretted it.

The men that see their wives and children as their enemies because they may inherit their wealth should change this mindset, since they inherit what is due to them, as they too are entitled to inherit their wives and children.