The institution of inheritance has been criticized because it renders possible the acquisition of wealth without work and because it is regarded as a principal source of economic inequality. Such attacks have come not only from radicals to whom complete equality of income appeals as a social ideal but also from more moderate thinkers to whom great differences in the distribution of wealth appear to be incompatible with modern views of the dignity of man. In response to their criticisms, inheritance has been defended on economic as well as on moral grounds.

Inheritance has been said to be necessary within the framework of an economy of individual property to guarantee the continuity of enterprise, without which long-range economic activity could not flourish. This argument has lost much of its force as large-scale enterprise has come to be carried on in corporate form and thus to be directed not by owners but by specialists in management who succeed each other in the manner of officeholders. There is, however, still force in the argument that, without the incentive of handing on the fruits of one’s work, competition and consequently the functioning of the total economy would be hampered.

It is possible to conceive of a social system in which property rights would end with the owner’s death. If the assets left behind were not reassigned to some other individual, the eventual result would be complete ownership of all wealth by the community, and the system of individual property would end. A new individual owner could be determined in one of four ways: ownership by the first taker, a practice that would produce strife and disorder; reassignment by a governmental agency, which would constitute an exercise of power regarded as dangerous in a free society; reallotment in accordance with settled rules generally fixed for all; or reallotment in accordance with the wishes of the decedent. The last two are the ways in which the modern systems of inheritance work: the estate is reallotted according to the rules of intestacy law or according to the will of the decedent.

The only debatable issues within a system of private ownership are: who are to be the takers in intestate succession; and whether or not and within what limits freedom of testation shall be permitted. In all societies, inheritance has developed as an incident of kinship. Even in a society in which property is regarded as belonging to individuals rather than kinship groups, the feeling of belonging to one’s group is still so strong, especially between parents and children, that a person’s sense of freedom would not be complete unless he knew that he could pass on his possessions to his children. The question arises, however, whether inheritance shall extend beyond the circle of those persons with whom the decedent was connected by ties of affection or about whose well-being he or she was, or should have been, concerned. In the urbanized, mobile population of highly industrialized nations, the family as a felt unit has tended to shrink to the small circle of husband, wife, and children. Ties of relationship tend to be weak even among first cousins.

In an age of expanding demands on government, there has been an inclination to let the estate of a person dying intestate pass to the public treasury rather than go to enrich distant relatives. In England the circle of intestate takers has been limited by the Administration of Estates Act of 1925 to relatives no more remote than the grandparents, uncles, and aunts of the deceased. Even more restrictive than those of England are the intestacy laws of communist countries. Under the law of the Soviet Union, intestate succession did not extend beyond descendants, the surviving spouse, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and incapacitated persons who had been dependent upon the decedent for at least one year prior to his death.

Another way of limiting the rights of remote relatives for the benefit of the public treasury consists in increasing the rates of inheritance taxes in proportion to the remoteness of the relationship between the takers and the decedent. In the United States, although the federal tax on succession depends solely on the size of the estate, the additional inheritance taxes levied by the states are widely patterned upon the closeness of relationship. This method is also employed in numerous other countries but not, since 1949, in England.

Inheritance law is also used to reduce inequalities in the distribution of wealth. This may be done by compulsory partitions, as under the laws of the French and the German pattern, or by means of progressive inheritance taxation, as in the United Kingdom or the United States, or by a combination of both. The law of inheritance and inheritance taxation thus functions as an instrument of social policy.

An impressive illustration of the way in which the law of inheritance serves social policy is the series of modifications to Soviet inheritance legislation. In the early stage of the Bolshevik Revolution, inheritance was limited to the descent of a modest amount of property to close relatives or to the surviving spouse, provided they were in need. The limit upon the amount of the property was lifted in 1926; and the requirement of need was also abolished for inheritance by the surviving spouse, descendants, parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters. Under the civil code of 1922, the power of testation was limited to increasing or reducing the share of particular intestate successors. After 1961 property could be left to any person. Private property could not exist in the means of production, and therefore inheritance was limited to goods of use or consumption and to savings accounts. Within the limits stated, inheritance and freedom of testation were regarded as constituting useful incentives to productivity without constituting a danger to the socialist system. Inheritance of private property was thus listed in the constitution of 1936 and reaffirmed in the constitution of 1977 as one of the rights of citizens.