Dr. Monzer Kahf, a prominent economist and counselor states: The comparison between gambling and inheritance is awfully unacceptable and unbelievable. Gambling is prohibited because it redistributes property from one person to another for no reason. It is not a reason for someone to loose and someone to gain that we hit a roller or throw a dice! Property changes hands when you either pay for it, one way or the other, or when it is given to you out of the good will of the giver as in a gift. This is why all forms of transfer of ownership from one person to another are prohibited including: theft, confiscation, taking property by coercion, cheating in price or commodity, etc.
On the other hand, heirs are in a way an extension of the person. What do you do with the property of a deceased: you have a choice of either destroy it (burn it, or burry it with the body), take it by the government or tribal chief, give it to close relatives or give to others by a choice of some authority. Definitely the choice must be give it to close relatives and any other choice, including the poor and needy would be unfair because in normal circumstances heirs have shared these properties with the deceased when she/he was alive, they may have contributed to its creation and accumulation, they relate to it and the deceased used to use her/his property to spend on them and support them. Among all potential use of such properties, giving it to close relatives is the logical and most appropriate course of action. That doesn’t make them lazy in their life time because they don’t know when it is going to come and they may have worked hard, with the owner during her/his life, to produce it, and she/he was the loved one for them, as they normally also were for her/him. If you eliminate inheritance to close relatives people would continuously attempt to evade the law by distribution during life time, and such distribution would normally be to these same heirs that the Islamic law nominates!