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I, like many of you, am working from home these days.  There is no Jummah or get-togethers with extended family and friends.  We are all told the air we breathe, and the things we touch can potentially kill us and our families.  The news is grim all over the world.  The fragility of everything, from the world’s economy, our livelihoods and our lives themselves has made us all contemplate what we value around us and our mortality.  I do hope we are all calling our loved ones, friends, and family wherever they are around the world.

MuslimMatters asked me to write an article on the things you need to as we contemplate these times, of course, from the perspective of an Estate Planning Attorney. you can read it now.  If you think it is valuable, share it with your friends and family.

Please be safe.

Link: MuslimMatters Article

To set up a 15-minute call on Islamic Estate Planning, click here.

I wrote an article on no-nuptial agreements at MuslimMatters.

Marriage is hard, and it’s a lot of work. Sometimes, it’s just too hard.

For a lot of people, the hardest part about marriage is trying to get out of one. For this, there is the family court system, lawyers, forensic accountants, private investigators, social workers, and psychologists, plus, the uncomfortable fact that you will be paying for all of this.

If you have endured divorced once or twice (and are poorer for it), another marriage may start to look irrational. The sad fact is people who get divorced once, are more likely to divorce a second or third time. People fall into the same patterns; they get the same results.

In my recent article in MuslimMatters, I write about a solution to this, an alternative to state-recognized marriage, no-nuptial agreements (also called cohabitation agreements or Marvin agreements.  You can fulfill the sunnah of marriage without a completely crazy system designed to make you poorer without any real benefit.   Maybe this won’t be appealing to everyone, but you should still take a look at it.

I wrote about charities in Muslim Matters recently. Many of them are poorly run and structured to make corruption easy. This description includes charities we support and whose leaders we love and respect. Historically there is one crucial sign things can go seriously wrong, and you don’t need to read a single financial statement. We saw this with the arrest of an American Muslim politician who was arrested by Pennsylvania authorities because of how she ran her charity, called “MECA.”  

I go into how regulation of charities works in the United States, which has a long history of nonprofit corruption, especially with religious organizations. The spectacular failure of the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County (and other examples) can happen again and again in the Muslim community the way things are going. The only real thing stopping this from happening is if you start to give in charity with excellence. Part of this is being an educated donor. Please do check out my article and let me know what you think.