Muwatta 2215

Malik says: the agreed practice among us is that when a testator makes a bequest in health or illness, which includes freeing some of his slaves or other things, he may change whatever he wishes, and do with it what he likes until he dies. If he wishes to drop or alter that bequest, he may, unless he has made a slave a conditional freedman (mudabbar); if he has, there is no way to change what he made conditional. If the testator could not change his bequest or the manumission it mentions, every testator would have tied up his property in a bequest of manumission and the like. The agreed practice among us, on which there is no dispute, is that he may change from it what he wishes, except conditional manumission. ¹

Belongs to the Muwatta, Book of Bequests. Source: the Muwatta. Mentions Malik ibn Anas. Built on in the chapters on bequest (wasiyya) and conditional manumission (tadbir).