Oman’s Key Legal Rules for Making a Bequest Explained

Under Oman’s Personal Status Law, a bequest, or wasiya, takes effect only after the testator dies. The law treats it as a donation and sets out how it can be made, accepted and enforced.

Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Al Zadjali, chairman of Mohammed Ibrahim Law Firm, told Times of Oman that “a bequest cannot exceed one-third of the estate of the testator, calculated after funeral expenses and debts, and anything beyond needs the competent heirs’ consent, enforced only against their shares.”

A bequest may be oral or written. It may also be communicated through an understandable gesture if the testator cannot speak or write. Anyone legally capable of making a donation can draft one, including during a terminal illness, and can amend or revoke it in full or in part before death.

An heir cannot receive a bequest without permission from the other competent heirs. A bequest may name a specific person, an unborn child, a specified or unspecified group, a charitable or scientific institution, or another public body that exists when the bequest is made. A specified legatee must accept it after the testator’s death. Silence for 30 days after learning of the bequest counts as acceptance, while an unspecified legatee does not need to accept it.

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A bequest cannot exceed one-third of the estate of the testator, calculated after funeral expenses and debts, and anything beyond needs the competent heirs’ consent, enforced only against their shares.

Al Zadjali said the law also makes a bequest obligatory for the nearest of kin. If a donation bequest overlooks them in favor of others, two-thirds of it must be returned to the nearest of kin.

A bequest ends if the testator revokes it, the legatee dies first, becomes an heir or rejects it after the testator’s death. It also ceases to apply if the legatee kills the testator, whether intentionally or by mistake and whether as perpetrator, accomplice or instigator, provided the legatee had sound judgment and was of criminal-responsibility age. Other grounds include destruction of the specific property or a third party’s entitlement to it, as well as either party’s apostasy from Islam unless that person later returns to the faith.

The estate is settled in sequence: funeral expenses, debts, the bequest and finally the remainder for the heirs. Al Zadjali advised testators to put bequests in writing because courts require evidence before hearing a claim.

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Anyone with capacity to make a donation may draft a bequest, even during terminal illness, and may amend or revoke it in whole or in part before death.