Like the problem of whether and to what extent freedom of testation shall be permitted, the question of whether a person’s estate may pass undivided to one person or whether it should be divided among several takers has significant political implications. The issue has been especially important in the history of Anglo-American law, where it is usually referred to as the problem of primogeniture. The term is too narrow, however, because the sole heir need not necessarily be the first-born son (primogenitus). Under the system of ultimogeniture, which existed in parts of England as the custom of Borough English, and also under the German National Socialist law of 1933, the person favoured was the youngest son; under systems of seniorate or juniorate, it is the oldest or youngest member of the family; under that of majorate or minorate, it is the oldest or the youngest person standing in equal degree of consanguinity to the decedent. There have also been cases where certain lands have been reserved to the second-born son and his line (secundogeniture) or the third-born and his line (tertiogeniture), etc.

In England, undivided inheritance was applied to real but not to personal property. The distinction between the two kinds of property was important in the struggle for power between church and state. In medieval England the organization of society in general and of the army and the public offices in particular was based upon the distribution of the ownership of the land, over all of which the king was lord paramount. The church, on the other hand, concerned itself with divine worship, the care of the sick and poor, and the cultivation of learning and the arts. After the Norman Conquest a compromise was worked out between the king and the church, under which the royal courts exercised jurisdiction over real property while succession to personal property was to be the concern of the ecclesiastical courts. Until 1926 descent to real property thus was subject to rules different from those applying to the distribution of personal property. For the former, the common-law courts developed a system that tended to maintain the existing military and social order through unpartitioned descent of land to one heir rather than division among several coheirs and, for a long time, by reluctance in admitting freedom of testation.

As to personal property, however, the ecclesiastical courts favoured a freedom of testation that allowed a decedent to leave part of his property to the church for the promotion of its manifold activities. In case of intestacy, the church favoured distribution among family members of equal nearness to the decedent. It applied rules, similar to those laid down in the 6th century by the Roman emperor Justinian (see below Intestate succession: Roman law), that in 1670 were fixed in the Statute of Distribution. The problem about which the two sets of courts differed—namely, whether an inheritance should be split up among several coheirs or pass undivided to a single heir—has, of course, not been limited to England. Unpartitioned inheritance has occurred in the most diverse civilizations—among the Khoekhoe of southwest Africa, the Maori of New Zealand, the inhabitants of the Tonga islands, in parts of China and Siberia, and in western Europe.

Why and how primogeniture became the common-law system of inheritance of freehold real estate is not clear. Primogeniture obviously served the needs of feudalism, in which the ownership of a parcel of land tended to be connected with a public office or with military duties that could not be well divided among several people. Partition was also likely to result in confusion regarding the services the peasants were bound to render to the landlord. At the peasant level, primogeniture prevented holdings from being split up until they were too small to allow a family to make a living. Attempts to avoid physical partition by selling the land and dividing the proceeds were impracticable in a society in which it was considered important to preserve family ownership of the farm and in which money was not readily available.

In spite of these circumstances, undivided descent of land to one heir never was the exclusive system among the European peasantry. It became, however, the almost universal system among the nobility, who were anxious to preserve intact the family wealth. In order to achieve this purpose, it became necessary, after alienability of land and freedom of testation had developed, not only to establish unpartitioned descent as the rule of intestate succession but also to “entail” the land—i.e., to prevent the owner from selling, giving away, or encumbering the land as well as from disposing of it by will. In England varying legal devices were used from the 13th century on. After the 17th century the so-called strict family settlement became the principal device, while on the Continent the fidei commissum of late Roman law was adapted to serve the purpose. The political power secured in this way to the nobility and gentry enabled it, as the necessary counterpart of primogeniture, to secure for the younger sons the lucrative positions in the church, the army, and, on the Continent, the expanding bureaucracy. In the 18th century this system was attacked both by the supporters of democratic ideals and by the economists of the classical school. To the latter, entails were objectionable because they not only stood in the way of mortgaging the land for purposes of improvement but also because inalienability prevented its coming into the hands of the most efficient cultivator. The system was first destroyed in the British colonies in New England, and in the course of the American Revolution it was swept away in the other states. In Europe, it collapsed during the French Revolution, and in the Napoleonic Code care was taken to prevent its reestablishment. Not only were all descendants or other relatives of equal degree to take part equally in intestate succession but also, by giving each child the right to a minimum share, a testator was prevented from giving all to one child.

In England the main object of the economists’ attack upon settlements was removed when, through a series of statutes, settled lands were gradually restored to the market; life tenants were thereby given the power under certain circumstances to mortgage or sell the land. Stocks and bonds, which had become a form of wealth more important than land, could, and still can be, tied up by means of a trust; but through the impact of heavy death duties this power has now been restricted. Primogeniture as the rule of intestacy was finally abolished by the Administration of Estates Act in 1925.

On the Continent, equal division among descendants and other relatives in equal degree became the general rule in the codes of the 19th century, but in certain countries, especially Austria and Germany, the possibility of entail lingered on until World War I. A new argument came to be used, however, in favour of unpartitioned inheritance of land in the 19th century. First in France and then in central Europe and Scandinavia, the argument was put forward that agricultural holdings were being reduced to less than the size necessary to provide a living for a family and that the old peasantry was thus in danger of being driven from the land. This led to the enactment of special laws on farm inheritance in sections of Austria, Germany, and Scandinavia. These laws, while providing unpartitioned inheritance in the case of intestacy, most often left unimpaired the power to provide for multiple succession by will and the power of alienation by sale. A more radical farm-inheritance law was enacted in Germany in 1933 by the National Socialists. It provided not only for undivided inheritance but also forbade partition by will and even the sale of the farm or its encumbrance by mortgage. The peasantry was to be secured as a social class living on the soil, removed from the vicissitudes and temptations of a market economy, although the law allowed the state to remove an unproductive holder. The law was repealed after World War II, but statutes attempting in milder ways to counteract the partitioning of farmsteads have been enacted. Even in France, the civil code was amended by a chain of laws beginning in 1922 so as to postpone, at least temporarily, the physical partition of a farmstead and certain other small holdings.