Inheritance - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition inheritance

Definition :

Inheritance, or hereditary succession, is the title whereby a man, on the death of his ancestor, acquires his estate by right of representation as his heir t law.

The 'canons of inheritance' are the rules directing the descent of real property throughout the lineal and collateral consanguinity of the owner dying intestate.

These rules have been abolished in the case of deaths after January 1st, 1926, with a few exceptions (see HEIR), by the (English) Administration of Estates Act, 1925, s. 51, but they still affect the devolution before 1926 of all titles to estates of inheritance.

Inheritance Act.--The Inheritance Act, 1833 (3 & 4 Wm. 4, c. 106), materially altered the old canons of real property descent, but because the Act does not extend to any descent which took place on the death of any person who died before the 1st of January, 1834, it is deemed expedient to give both old and new:-

Old Canons.--The old Canons, which obtain in cases of ancestors dying before the 1st of January, 1834, are the following:-

(1) That inheritances shall lineally descend to the issue of the person who last died actually seized, in infinitum, but shall never lineally ascend.

(2) That the male issue shall be admitted before the female.

(3) That where there are two or more males in equal degree, the eldest only shall inherit; but the females all together.

(4) That the legal descendants ininfinitum, of any person deceased, shall represent their ancestor; that is, shall stand in the same place as the person himself would have done had he been living.

(5) That on failure of lineal descendants, or issue of the person last seized, the inheritance shall descend to his collateral relations being of the blood of the first purchaser subject to the three preceding rules.

(6) That the collateral heir of the person last seized must be his next collateral kinsman of the whole blood.

(7) That in collateral inheritances the male stocks shall be preferred to the female (that is, kindred derived from the blood of the male ancestors, however remote, shall be admitted before those from the Blood of the females, however near), unless where the lands have in fact descended from a female.

Present Canons, The Canons according to the new law grafted upon the old are the following:-

(1) That inheritances shall, in the first place, lineally descend to the issue of the last purchaser in infinitum; by 'purchaser' being meant the person who last acquired the land otherwise than by descent.

(2) That the male issue shall be admitted before the female.

(3) That where two or more of the male issue are in equal degree of consanguinity to the purchaser, the eldest only shall inherit, but the females all together.

(4) That all the lineal descendants, in infinitum, of any person deceased, shall represent their ancestor; that is, shall stand in the same place as the person himself would have done had he been living.

(5) That on failure of lineal descendants or issue of the purchaser, the inheritance shall descend to his nearest lineal ancestor.

(6) That the father and all the male paternal ances-tors of the purchaser, and their descendants, shall be admitted before any of the female paternal ancestors, or their heirs; all the female paternal ancestors and their heirs before the mother, or any of the maternal ancestors, or her or their descendants; and the mother and all the male maternal ancestors, and her and their descendants, before any of the female maternal ancestors, or their heirs.

(7) That a kinsman of the half blood shall be capable of being heir; and that such kinsman shall inherit next after a kinsman in the same degree of the whole blood, and after the issue of such kinsman when the common ancestor is a male, and next after the common ancestor when such ancestor is a female.

(8) That in the admission of female paternal ancestors, the mother of the more remote male paternal ancestor and her heirs shall be preferred to the mother of a less remote male paternal ancestor and her heirs; and in the admission of female maternal ancestors, the mother of the more remote male maternal ancestor and her heirs shall be preferred to the mother of a less remote male maternal ancestor and her heirs, Williams' Real Property; Watkins on Descents; Sugden's Real Property Statutes.

(9) Where there shall be a total failure of heirs of the purchaser, or where any lands shall be descendible, as if an ancestor had been the purchaser thereof, and there shall be a total failure of the heirs of such ancestor, then, and in every such case, the land shall descend, and the descent shall thenceforth be traced from the person last entitled to the land as if he had been the purchaser thereof; see s. 19 of the Law of Property Amendment Act, 1859 (22 & 23 Vict. c. 35), which is to be read as a part of s. 20 of the (English) Inheritance Act, 1833.

(10) Inheritance is in some sort a legal and fictitious continuation of the personality of the dead man, for the representation is in some sort identified by the law with him who he represents. The rights which the dead man can no longer own or exercise in propria persona and the obligations which he can no longer in propria persona fulfill, he owns, exercises and fulfils in the person of a living substitute. To this extent, and in this fiction, it may be said that legal personality of a man survives his natural personality; until his obligations being duly per-formed, and his property duly disposed of, his representation among the living is no longer called for, Chiranjilal Shrialal Goenka v. Jasjit Singh, (1993) 2 SCC 507 (512).