While the Anglo-American system has largely adopted the Roman order of succession, many of the civil-law countries appear to have followed the Germanic system of parentelic order.

The first parentela, or order, consists of the descendants of the decedent; the second, of his parents and their descendants collateral to the decedent; the third, of his grandparents and their descendants collateral to the decedent, etc. As long as there is any person standing in a nearer order, no person standing in a more remote one can succeed. In each parentela, persons of a lower grade exclude those of a higher grade. Variations exist in several respects. A person who stood in the first two orders but who predeceased the intestate is generally represented by his descendants; as to the more remote orders, the legal systems differ, as they do also with respect to the question of whether, insofar as representation takes place, the distribution is by roots or by heads. (When distribution is by roots—per stirpes—the estate is divided into as many parts as there are living and dead, but represented, persons standing in the same grade; when distribution is by heads—per capita—the estate is divided into as many parts as there are living persons entitled to sharing.) Considerable differences also exist in the treatment of the surviving spouse of the decedent.

Modern tendencies

Among the most conspicuous trends of modern legislation is the vanishing concern about keeping property within the bloodline through which it came to the decedent. This traditional idea, which was particularly strong with respect to land, had in the field of intestacy resulted in the so-called rule of ancestral estate. In Anglo-American law the doctrine of ancestral estate was part of the Canons of Descent of real estate. It meant that if an intestate died without descendants, property that had come to him from ancestors should revert to the line whence it had come. In England the principle was abolished in 1925, and in the United States, too, it has practically disappeared. In civil-law countries, where it was once known as jus recadentiae, the principle has disappeared, except in the Spanish province of Aragon. But France has preserved the related ideas of the fente and the droit de retour. Under the former, the estate is divided equally between the paternal and the maternal lines (and under the refente between the various lines of grandparents). Under the droit de retour, assets that were received as a gift by an intestate who dies without descendants return to the donor. The once widespread idea that, among collaterals, relatives of the full blood occupy better positions than those of the half blood survives in France, in several Latin-American countries, and, in several different forms, in some jurisdictions of the United States.

Changing attitudes about sex and marriage, but also about the equality and dignity of human beings, are widely finding expression in laws assimilating the legal situation of persons born out of wedlock to that of legitimate children. The equation of an illegitimate child with a foundling long ago disappeared from common-law systems, but it still persists in the laws of France and of countries following the French pattern, where a child born out of wedlock lacks legal relationship not only to his father but also to his mother until the relationship is formally recognized or established. Where parentage is established, a 1972 French law gives a child born out of wedlock nearly the same inheritance rights as a legitimate child, including the right to an indefeasible share of the parent’s estate. An exception remains, however, for children conceived while their father or mother was married to a third person. In such cases, the child is not barred from inheritance altogether, but his or her rights are less than those of a surviving spouse or legitimate children.

In contrast, rights of inheritance between the illegitimate child and his mother have long been recognized in other jurisdictions, including those of the common law and of the civil law other than the French type. Impetus to the recognition of inheritance rights between an illegitimate child and his father was given by Norway’s Castberg Law of 1915. Similar legislation now exists in the other Scandinavian countries, in the Federal Republic of Germany, in several countries of Latin America, in the countries of eastern Europe, in England under the Family Law Reform Act of 1969 and the Legitimacy Act of 1976, in Scotland under the Law Reform Act of 1968, and in several states of the United States. The statutes vary greatly with respect to such details as the mode in and the time at which paternity must be ascertained, the extent of the child’s share in the estate, the question of the extent, if any, to which illegitimate relationship creates rights of intestate succession from or through an illegitimate, and the illegitimate’s rights to intestate succession to kindred of his father or mother.