Partible inheritance is a system of
inheritance in which property is apportioned among
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officiall ...
s. It contrasts in particular with
primogeniture
Primogeniture ( ) is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn legitimate child to inherit the parent's entire or main estate in preference to shared inheritance among all or some children, any illegitimate child or any collateral relativ ...
, which was common in
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a wa ...
society and requires that the whole or most of the inheritance passes to the eldest son, and with
agnatic seniority, which requires the succession to pass to next senior male.
Partible inheritance systems are common ones to be found in legal systems based on both
common law and the
Napoleonic Code. In the latter case, there may be a further requirement implying division according to a scheme, such as equal shares for legitimate children.
Partible inheritance has been common in ancient
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
* Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Fo ...
and
Germanic tribal societies, an example of the latter pattern is the so-called
Salic patrimony Terra Salica was a type of land property invented by the Salian Franks. The Merovingians had two types of land property: '' de alode'' and terra Salica; the former could be inherited by both sexes, while the latter was restricted to men. The Frankis ...
.
Historically speaking, non-partible inheritance has been associated with
monarchies and the wish for landed
estates to be kept together as units. In the
Middle Ages, the partible inheritance systems, for example, of the
Merovingian dynasty, the
Carolingian Empire and the
Kievan Rus had the effect of dividing kingdoms into princely states, and are often thought to be responsible for their gradual decline in power.
Partible inheritance was the generally-accepted form of inheritance adopted in New England in the 18th century. The southern colonies adopted a system of
male primogeniture in cases of
intestacy, and the northern colonies adopted a system of partible inheritance in cases of intestacy, with the eldest son receiving a double portion of the estate. In practice, a strong
bequest motive in the colonies adopting multigeniture reduced the variability in demographic experiences across colonies with different inheritance systems.
See also
*
Gavelkind
*
Gavelkind in Ireland
Under Brehon law, gavelkind, a form of partible inheritance, was the system of land inheritance. The Normans called the Irish inheritance law the name ''gavelkind'' because of its apparent similarity to Jute inheritance in Kent.
The law
Upon the ...
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Partible Inheritance
Inheritance
Legal terminology
Sibling