In force Last amended 6/1/1439 AH
Saudi Minors' Property Guardianship Law
نظام الولاية على أموال القاصرين
The law covers establishing the authority and its competences, its board and management, managing and investing funds, reporting deaths, loss of legal capacity and absence, the end of the authority's guardianship, and general provisions.
- Articles
- 41
- In force
- 41
- Amended
- 6
- Issued
- 13/3/1427 AH
Issued by: مرسوم ملكي رقم م/17 بتاريخ 13 / 3 / 1427 · قرار مجلس الوزراء رقم 53 بتاريخ 12 / 3 / 1427
Each article shows the official Arabic text, which is the only legally binding version, followed by our plain-English explanation.
Browse Minors' Property Guardianship Law by topic
Minors' Property Guardianship Authority5 articlesPowers of the Guardianship Authority1 articleBoard of Directors and President of the Authority6 articlesAdministering Family Endowments4 articlesInvesting Minors' Property5 articlesDealing with a Minor's Property1 articleReporting Minors and Absentees5 articlesInventory of a Minor's Estate3 articlesInterdiction of Persons of Limited Capacity and Absentees6 articlesRemoving and Auditing Guardians and Executors4 articlesEnd of Guardianship and Handover of a Minor's Property2 articlesPenalties for Violating the Guardianship Law4 articles
Articles of the Saudi Minors' Property Guardianship Law
- Article 1The article establishes the General Authority for Guardianship of Minors' Property and Those in Their Status, based in Riyadh with branches, with legal personality and an independent budget, linked to the Prime Minister.
- Article 2The article defines the Authority's competence over property that has no custodian, in fact or in law, and lists its main tasks: guardianship, curatorship, administering absentees' property, safeguarding found property and blood money, and supervising executors.
- Article 3يشكل للهيئة مجلس إدارة على النحو الآتي: 1 - وزير العدل رئيساً. 2 - رئيس الهيئة نائباً للرئيس. 3 - تسعة أعضاء من ذوي الخبرة والكفاية…
- Article 4The article makes the Authority's board of directors its supreme authority, and lists its competences over regulations, committees, investment, the budget, and allocating no more than 5% of net investment return.
- Article 5يجتمع مجلس الإدارة بصفة دورية مرة كل شهرين على الأقل للنظر في الموضوعات المدرجة في جدول أعماله. ويجوز للرئيس دعوة المجلس للاجتماع كلما دعت…
- Article 6The article governs filling a board member's seat if it becomes vacant for any reason, and lets the board chair treat a member as resigned if he misses three consecutive sessions without an acceptable excuse.
- Article 7The article requires the board of directors to form four permanent committees from among its members: the Sharia, Investment, Endowment Projects, and Audit Committees, and specifies each one's competence.
- Article 8يكون للهيئة رئيس بالمرتبة الممتازة يعيًن بأمر ملكي كما يكون له نائب أو أكثر يعينون بقرار من مجلس الوزراء بناء على اقتراح من وزير العدل ..…
- Article 9The article provides that the head of the Authority or his delegate represents it in its dealings with other bodies and before the courts.
- Article 10The article gives the Authority administration of private endowments with no administrator and supervision of appointed administrators, requires periodic accounts from them, and lets it refer a harmful administrator to the court.
- Article 11The article allows the Authority to request partition of a waqf, and the competent court to permit it, where the endowed property is an undivided share co-owned with another owner or shared between two or more waqfs.
- Article 12The article allows the supervisor, where a waqf is dilapidated or has no income and there is nothing to restore it with, to permit someone to restore it at his own expense by building or planting for a known term and a set rent.
- Article 13The article limits the cases in which the Authority may exchange a waqf for a similar one, and bars selling, exchanging, restoring or relocating a waqf without the approval of the competent court.
- Article 14The article provides that all of the Authority's investments and financial dealings are in accordance with the provisions of Islamic Sharia.
- Article 15The article allows the Authority, after the Board of Directors' permission, to invest a percentage of the funds it manages in its own name and distribute the return to those covered by the Law, leaving the controls to the Implementing Regulations.
- Article 16The article lists the components of the Authority's funds: the funds of those covered by the Law and what passes to it, the income of its activities, the State's contributions, and the aid, gifts and donations the Board of Directors accepts.
- Article 17The article specifies the dealings that the Authority's administration carries out in the funds of those covered by the Law only with the Board of Directors' approval and under its supervision, such as acquiring and disposing of real estate and settlements above SAR 50,000.
- Article 18The article allows the Authority to manage funds shared between those covered by the Law and others, with the partners' consent or by court decision, for a percentage of no less than 5% of the net return on the others' share, and allows management to be handed to the covered person's relatives.
- Article 19The article requires adult heirs, relatives living with the deceased, officials and others to notify the Authority within three days at most of the death of anyone who left minors or those treated like them.
- Article 20The article requires the executor or guardian of an unborn child to notify the Authority within three days at most of the end of the pregnancy term or of the child's birth, alive or dead.
- Article 21The article requires doctors, hospital directors and administrative and judicial authorities to notify the Authority within three days at most of cases of partial or total loss of capacity arising from a mental disability.
- Article 22The article requires courts to notify the Authority within three days at most of the executors, curators, guardians and supervisors they appoint, so that it can oversee their dealings.
- Article 23The article requires all governmental and non-governmental bodies to supply the Authority with the data and documents it requests that relate to its jurisdiction or to those covered by the Law.
- Article 24The article requires the Authority, on receipt of the heirs' inventory or the notifications, to protect covered persons' rights and inventory their funds, rights and obligations, and allows it to check their residences in the presence of the heirs or an official.
- Article 25The article bars heirs and partners from dealing with the estate of anyone who died leaving minors or an unborn child from the date of death until the Authority's inventory, makes any dealing without written permission void, and sets the inventory at three months.
- Article 26The article extends the bar on dealing in Article 25 to the partners of a person under interdiction, an absentee and a person with no known heir, from the date of the judgment.
- Article 27The article requires the Authority, if it fears the loss of a right or dealing in the funds while a request for guardianship, its removal or its suspension is pending, to ask the competent court for permission to take precautionary measures.
- Article 28The article sets out the Authority's requests to the court, such as interdiction of an adult, establishing absence and the non-appearance of an heir, and lifting interdiction and establishing the return or death of the absentee or the existence of an heir.
- Article 29The article gives the Authority the right to object to all non-final judgments and decisions in lawsuits to which it is a party, and to challenge them by the methods of appeal established under Sharia and the law.
- Article 30The article requires the Authority to ask for the removal of an absent, interdicted or defaulting guardian, executor, curator or supervisor, and requires a removed defaulting person to submit an account within three months.
- Article 31The article requires the Authority to ask the court to appoint a litigation executor if the covered person's interest conflicts with its own or that of his guardian, executor, curator or waqf supervisor.
- Article 32The article sets the cases in which the Authority's guardianship ends, requires funds to be handed over to those concerned within six months by a record, and deals with their failure to take delivery by appointing a custodian while the Authority takes 20% of the net return on investment.
- Article 33The article bars the Authority's board members, staff and representatives from disclosing its secrets, or buying, leasing or contracting for the covered persons' funds in a personal capacity, and voids any dealing in breach.
- Article 34The article punishes anyone who breaches the provisions of the Minors' Property Guardianship Law with a fine not exceeding SAR 100,000 and imprisonment for a period not exceeding 30 days, or either.
- Article 35The article makes imposing the penalties in Article 34 a matter for the courts, allows them to impose heavier penalties, and assigns the role of prosecution to the Authority.
- Article 36The article allows those concerned to object to the Authority's decisions and its actions toward them before the competent body, in accordance with the Sharia rules and applicable laws.
- Article 37The article requires the Board of Directors to appoint one or more licensed auditors and set their fees, without prejudice to the General Auditing Bureau's oversight, and makes the auditors jointly liable where there are several.
- Article 38The article makes the Authority's fiscal year the State's fiscal year, with the exception that its first fiscal year begins on the date the Law takes effect.
- Article 39The article makes the Authority replace the Money Houses Department of the Ministry of Justice and transfers its rights and obligations to it, and repeals what conflicts with the Law except the Supreme Awqaf Council Law and the Regulation on Organizing Charitable Waqfs.
- Article 40The article provides that the Chairman of the Board of Directors, who is the Minister of Justice, issues the Implementing Regulations of the Minors' Property Guardianship Law.
- Article 41The article provides that the Minors' Property Guardianship Law is published in the Official Gazette and takes effect ninety days after the date of its publication.