who is the owner?

[peaceandlove]

My question is who is the owner as per islamic law? i am asking this as whom reponsibility is to pay zakat.

I belong to typical family in pakistan where mother in law (my mother) has all the ruling power, my parents give my wife few gold jewellery also there is few jewellyer which given to me but as men cannot wear jewellery so my mother retain it in his own custody,

Now issue, although people say i am the owner of the jewellery some jewerlly is custody of me and my wife but we had no right to sell it as my mother gave it to us , also the jewerlly i personally get is control by my mother and i even did not have right to see it, from 3 years i cannot even see it.

If i say to my mother give me control then they became too much angry that i did not trust him ,

the amount of zakat is now too much that i cannot afford to pay, my mother and wife say i had to pay zakat , that almost too much for me to pay,

So my question is, is i am the owner of jewellery which i even have no right to see or even touch without permision? so selling and paying zakat has no question.

I want to pay zakat but the amount is too big for me to give using my income and saving, and i did not have any right over jewlelly except people say that it belong to me but i cannot even see or touch it without permision even i did not know how much it is.

Hope you understand my situation.

[ardianto]

Edited. ......... Please delete.

(In Shaa Allah, I will write my answer with better explanation)

[ardianto]

Assalamualaikum.

One kind of transfer the rights in muamalah is hibah (grant), or giving something without the receiver must pay for this. And in hibah, is allowed if the person who give the goods also give message. In example, I give you a car with message "Do not sell this car". Hibah with special message like this is still valid.

And the main condition to make a hibah valid is, the person who give really gives this goods, and transfer the ownership to the person who receive it. It's mean, if I give you a car, I must really give it to you as the new owner with every right over this car, and I must relinquish my rights over this car.

How if I just tell you "I give you this car" but I did not really give it and still hold this car by myself?. It's means the hibah hasn't happen. What has been happened is just a promise to give something. If I haven't yet transfer the right of ownership to you, it's means this car is still belong to me, and every obligation that related to this car, like yearly tax, is still my responsibility, not your responsibility.

Frankly bro, I do not really know your situation. So I can't give you exact answer about who own that jewellery. But I hope the analogy that I have written can give you a clue about who is the owner.