Inheritance

“ Those very persons, He being possessor, become His inheritance, and He in turn becomes their inheritance. Hear in what manner they become His inheritance: “The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance.” [13] Hear in what manner He becomes their inheritance. He says in the Psalms: “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance, and of my cup.” [14] Let us possess Him, and let Him possess us: let Him possess us as Lord; let us possess Him as salvation, let us possess Him as light. ”

“ Formation of Instincts.—The structure produced by repetition of voluntary acts, and which, as we have seen, determines habits, by the law of inheritance is transmitted in a slight degree to the next generation. I say in a slight degree only, because inheritance is from the whole line of ancestry and not from the immediate parents alone. The inheritance from the immediate parents is greater, it is true, than from any one of the series of previous generations, but infinitely less than the sum of inheritances from all previous generations. ”

“ Secondly, The tenure by which they shall hold and possess it is very good, they shall come and inherit it. What we come to by inheritance, is not got by any procurement of our own, but purely, as the lawyers express it, by the act of God. It is God that makes heirs, heirs of heaven. We come to an inheritance by virtue of our sonship, our adoption; if children, then heirs. A title by inheritance is the sweetest and surest title; it alludes to possessions in the land of Canaan, which passed by inheritance, and would not be alienated longer than to the year of Jubilee. ”

“ I seek an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away [1 Pet. 1:4] , and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there [Heb. 11:16] , to be bestowed, at the time appointed, on them that diligently seek it. ”

“ But as to all estates derived to the intestate from parent or other kindred, by descent, gift, or devise; the statute makes the person, from whom the estate came or descended, the stock of inheritance; and it makes the next of kin to the intestate, who is of the blood of that person, the heir at law. Now, it is inquired, what possible object could there have been for this distinction, but that of keeping the family inheritance in the blood of the family?But further, the same distinction is made between estates derived, and derived in the same manner too, to the intestate. ”

“ I am much inclined to think, that the right succession or inheritance much depends on those connexions of the imagination, and that the relation to a former proprietor begetting a relation to the object, is the cause why the property is transferred to a man after the death of his kinsman. ”

“ This verse of the Aqdas introduces a lengthy passage in which Bahá’u’lláh elaborates the Bahá’í law of inheritance. In reading this passage one should bear in mind that the law is formulated with the presumption that the deceased is a man; its provisions apply, mutatis mutandis, when the deceased is a woman.
The system of inheritance which provides for distribution of the deceased’s estate among seven categories of heirs (children, spouse, father, mother, brothers, sisters, and teachers) is based on the provisions set out by the Báb in the Bayán. ”

“ That is an inheritance that will never die out; an inheritance that is for the spiritual good and salvation of her descendants, and their children after them; an inheritance by which the Almighty is daily praised in hymn and prayer by servants consecrated to Him, and by which the Christian people are fed with the word of God, and encouraged to lead Christian lives. ”

“ Whereas, by dividing the inheritance according to the roots or stirpes, the rule of descent is kept uniform and steady: the issue of the eldest son excludes all other pretenders, as the son himself (if living) would have done ”

“ Thrown into technical language, the dependence of the various conceptions which contribute to the notion of a Will is thus expressed. A Will or Testament is an instrument by which the devolution of an inheritance is prescribed. Inheritance is a form of universal succession. A universal succession is a succession to a universitas juris, or university of rights and duties. Inverting this order we have therefore to inquire what is a universitas juris; what is a universal succession; what is the form of universal succession which is called an inheritance. ”

“ God giveth his gifts unto all, but the inheritance to none but his children; those that are his sons and daughters by regeneration and adoption receive the promise of eternal inheritance, Heb. ix. 15. This inheritance is not our purchase, but our Father's gift; not wages that we merit, but the effect of grace, which first makes us children and then settles this inheritance upon us by a firm unalterable covenant.
2. The incomparable excellencies of this inheritance, which are four:— (1.) It is incorruptible, in which respect it is like its Maker, who is called the incorruptible God, Rom. ”

“ If a man should die intestate, his children shall stand first in the order of succession; if there are no children, the inheritance shall descend to the grandchildren; if there are no grandchildren, then the great-grandchildren shall have a right to it; and if the decedent should leave neither children nor grandchildren, nor father nor mother, then his grandfather or grandmother, should either be living, may claim the inheritance of his estate. ”

“ If we take it in the former sense it will mean that God is the inheritance and we are the heirs; that the saints now possess imperfectly, and anticipate in its fulness, the inheritance of grace, the spiritual Canaan which they are to enjoy here and hereafter. If, however, we take it, as is more likely, in the latter sense, it will mean that we are the inheritance and God is the Possessor and Heir. We must never forget that the Biblical ideas associated with “heir” and “inheritance” always refer to possession, and not, as in ordinary phraseology, to succession. ”

“ Turning now to a Dayabhaga family, we find that the property is vested, not in the family as a whole, but in certain individual members of it—that is to say, in those male members of the family who have no ancestor alive. And inasmuch as the undivided share of each member is his own, it follows that at his death inheritance will operate and it goes to his heirs. ”

“ The son succeeds by inheritance to his father's relict, who, being generally in years, is condemned to be useful when she has ceased to be an ornament, and, if there are several, they are equally divided amongst the heirs. ”

“ In strict accuracy, the law of ancestral inheritance must be described as giving means of determining the probable deviation of any individual from the mean of his own generation, when the deviations of some or all of his ancestry from the types of their respective generations are known. ”

“ By acting as heir is mean, for instance, using things belonging to the inheritance as one's own, or selling them, or cultivating or giving leases of the deceased's estates, provided only one expresses in any way whatsoever, by deed or word, one's intention to accept the inheritance, so long as one knows that the person with whose property one is thus dealing has died testate or intestate, and that one is that person's heir. ”

“ This I take to be the true reason of the constant preference of the agnatic succession, or issue derived from the male ancestors, through all the stages of collateral inheritance; as the ability for personal service was the reason for preferring the males at first in the direct lineal succession. ”

“ We have to observe here, that the word inheritance is frequently applied in the Scripture to one’s property, even though it may not have come to them by inheritance, and thus the people of God are called his inheritance, and he theirs. ”

“ We inherit thoughts as we inherit wealth; we inherit customs and laws and forms of worship, and indeed [Pg 30] our whole mental furniture; we can add enormously to our inheritance, and can transmit the augmented fund to our descendants. But the other process of inheritance, to which the word "heredity" is taken to apply, is not, immediately at least, cumulative. We inherit the old faculties, bodily and mental, unaltered, or with infinitesimal alterations, though we live in a different environment, and are ourselves as much altered as our environment. ”

“ And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families: and to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer ye shall give the less inheritance: every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth; according to the tribes of your fathers ye shall inherit. But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. ”

“ Descent, 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 at law. An heir therefore is he upon whom the law casts the estate immediately on the death of the ancestor: and an estate, so descending to the heir, is in law called the inheritance. ”

“ His son, or whoso should be his heir, must succeed to an undisputed inheritance, even if it should be necessary to make away with all the nobility of the realm, and most of the people, in order to secure the so-much-desired quiet. ”

“ While it is true that too much importance cannot be placed upon the subject of heredity, the inheritance which we receive not only from our parents and grandparents but even from our great-grandparents, and while it is true that all that can be acquired in character and culture, both intellectual and physical, is transmitted from the parents to their children ”

“ Nor can I see, why the conflict for the delivery of the earthly people and the inheritance is of more or exclusive importance, rather than what is of heaven, in which the victory and fate of the heirs is decided ”

“ Because it seems to us inhuman and impious that for such a cause sons should be disinherited from the inheritance of their father because their father died in the mund of their grandfather. But let them take an equal portion with their uncles of everything in the place of their father. ”

“ What matters, from forty on, for the rest of your life, is the kind of inheritance you've given your children. You don't know it yet, but the thing that's laid on men and women to do is to give their children as good an inheritance as they can. ”

“ It is to the first-born, whether a boy or a girl, that the inheritance is transmitted, and he or she is forbidden to abandon it. At the time of marriage the husband or wife must take the name of the heir or heiress who marries and personifies the property. ”

“ The law of inheritance is greatly in favor of sons, and daughters are frequently entirely excluded from participation in the heritage, or their share is reduced to one-half or one-third of the son's inheritance. ”

“ If any children of an intestate are dead, and any are living, the inheritance descends to the children living, and to the descendants of the children dead, so that each child living shall receive such share as he would receive if all were living, and the children of those who are dead such share as the parents would receive if living. ”

“ When the law of inheritance permits, still more when it decrees, the equal division of a father's property among all his children, its effects are of two kinds: it is important to distinguish them from each other, although they tend to the same end. ”

“ Relations of the half blood shall inherit equally with those of the whole blood in the same degree; and the descendants of such relatives shall inherit in the same manner as the descendants of the whole blood, unless the inheritance come to the intestate by descent, devise, or gift, of some one of his ancestors, in which case all those who are not of the blood of such ancestor shall be excluded from such inheritance. ”

“ Shall we—that is to say—seek to describe the mechanism of inheritance, or to discover the like qualities that have actually appeared in successive generations of blood-relatives? It is quite impossible to state the alternatives without adverting to the fact that biology has, for a half-century, been absorbed in the parallel investigation of physical inheritance. ”

“ Have any of us, in the latter-days, received inheritances upon the face of this earth that shall be everlasting? No, we are not prepared to receive them, and they are not prepared for us. I am telling you these things that you may know and understand that, when we talk about property, or anything else that we seem to possess, we have not yet received anything for an everlasting inheritance. If we are faithful we shall receive after a long time, that is, it may seem long to us who reckon time by years, months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds. ”

“ As a matter of fact, sons were admitted to inheritance after their fathers, and sometimes succession was extended to other relatives, but the person taking inheritance paid a heavy fine for entering into possession, or gave up a horse, an ox, or some other especially valuable piece of property. ”

“ The inquiry into one's ancestry would thus answer a nobler purpose than the gratification of human vanity, or the recovery of an alienated inheritance; it would exhibit the influence of the past upon the present, afford important lessons of encouragement or admonition, and discover our claim perhaps, to something better than gold or silver "for the good man" even though he is poor, "leaveth an inheritance to his children's children." ”