From Shaykh Muhammad bin Saleh Al-Uthaymeen’s official website. Source
Question:
A listener, Muḥammad Ḥamd Allāh Bātī, asks: Is it permissible to dedicate the reward of prayers offered after the obligatory prayer to one’s deceased father or mother?
Answer:
Ash-Shaykh: The stronger view according to us is that this is permissible, and that a person may gift the reward of non-obligatory righteous deeds to whomever he wishes among the Muslims.
However, even so, this is not something that ought to be done, nor is it from the Sunnah; that is to say, it is not something required of a person to do. If he does so, there is no harm in it.
Supplicating for one’s parents is better than gifting acts of devotion to them, because supplication is a legislated matter by agreement and beneficial by the agreement of the people of knowledge, whereas gifting acts of devotion is a matter concerning which the scholars have differed.
We advise our brothers who wish to benefit their parents or other Muslims to benefit them by supplicating for them for forgiveness, mercy, and divine good pleasure, for that is more effective and more beneficial by the consensus of the Muslims.
[End of the answer.]
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Imam ash-Shāfiʿī (Rahimahullah)-
“Rūḥ ibn al-Faraj informed me; he said: I heard al-Ḥasan ibn aṣ-Ṣabāḥ az-Zaʿfarānī ask ash-Shāfiʿī about reciting at the grave, and he said: ‘There is no harm in it.’”
Abu Bakr al-Khallāl, al-Qirāʾah ʿinda al-Qubūr, p. 89.
(https://shamela.ws/book/8271/6)
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Imam Ibn al-Qayyim (Rahimahullah) stated:
“As for reciting the Qur’an and gifting it to him (the deceased) voluntarily without payment, this reaches him, just as the reward of fasting and ḥajj reaches him.
If it is said: This was not known among the Salaf, and the Prophet (Salallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) did not direct them to it —
the answer is: if the one raising this objection already admits that the reward of ḥajj, fasting, and supplication reaches the deceased, then it is said to him: what is the difference between that and the reward of Qur’an recitation reaching him? The mere fact that the Salaf did not do something is not itself proof that it cannot reach; from where do we get such a universal negation?
And if it is said: the Messenger of Allah (Salallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) guided them to fasting, ḥajj, and charity, but not to recitation — the answer is: he (Salallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) did not initiate those rulings without being asked; rather, they came as answers to questions. One asked him about performing ḥajj for his deceased relative, so he allowed it. Another asked him about fasting on behalf of the deceased, so he allowed it. He did not forbid anything else besides that. And what difference is there between the reward of fasting — which is merely intention and abstention — and the reward of recitation and remembrance?”
(Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Rūḥ, p. 142–143)
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Imam Mansur al-Buhuti (Rahimahullah)-
“Any act of devotion — such as supplication, seeking forgiveness, prayer, fasting, ḥajj, Qur’an recitation, and other than that — if a Muslim performs it and assigns its reward to a deceased Muslim or a living Muslim, that benefits him.
Aḥmad said: The deceased receives every kind of good, due to the transmitted texts regarding this, as mentioned by al-Majd and others. He added: Even if it were gifted to the Prophet (Salallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam) it would be permissible and the reward would reach him, though one should not single him out for that, because every act of worship performed by someone from his Ummah already brings him the like of its reward without reducing the reward of the doer in the least.”
(Manṣūr ibn Yūnus al-Buhūtī, al-Rawḍ al-Murbiʿ Sharḥ Zād al-Mustaqniʿ, Kitāb al-Janāʾiz, in the section discussing gifting reward to the deceased; in some printed editions around p. 192.)
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Saheehus-Seerah 