Latin
Ancient Law
Roman Law and Society, Useful Links to Roman Law Materials. 2.1.223
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We come next to a "universal succession." A universal succession is a succession to a universitas juris. It occurs when one man is invested with the legal clothing of another, becoming at the same moment subject to all his liabilities and entitled to all his rights. In order that the universal succession may be true and perfect, the devolution must take place uno ictu, as the jurists phrase it. It is of course possible to conceive one man acquiring the whole of the rights and duties of another at different periods, as for example by successive purchases; or he might acquire them in different capacities, part as heir, part as purchaser, part as legatee. But though the group of rights and duties thus made up should in fact amount to the whole legal personality of a particular individual, the acquisition would not be a universal succession. In order that there may be a true universal succession, the transmission must be such as to pass the whole aggregate of rights and duties at the same moment and in virtue of the same legal capacity in the recipient. The notion of a universal succession, like that of a juris universitas, is permanent in jurisprudence, though in the English legal system it is obscured by the great variety of capacities in which rights are acquired, and, above all, by the distinction between the two great provinces of English property "realty" and "personalty." The succession of an assignee in bankruptcy to the entire property of the bankrupt is, however, a universal succession, though as the assignee only pays debts to the extent of the assets, this is only a modified form of the primary notion. Were it common among us for persons to take assignments of all a man's property on condition of paying all his debts, such transfers would exactly resemble the universal successions known to the oldest Roman Law. When a Roman citizen adrogated a son, i. e. took a man, not already under Patria Potestas, as his adoptive child, he succeeded universally to the adoptive child's estate, i. e. he took all the property and became liable for all the obligations. Several other forms of universal succession appear in the primitive Roman Law, but infinitely the most important and the most durable of all was that one with which we are more immediately concerned, Hareditas or Inheritance. Inheritance was a universal succession occurring at a death. The universal successor was Hares or Heir. He stepped at once into all the rights and all the duties of the dead man. He was instantly clothed with his entire legal person, and I need scarcely add that the special character of the Hares remained the same, whether he was named by a Will or whether he took on an Intestacy. The term Hares is no more emphatically used of the Intestate than of the Testamentary Heir, for the manner in which a man became Hares had nothing to do with the legal character he sustained. The dead man's universal successor, however he became so, whether by Will or by Intestacy, was his Heir. But the Heir was not necessarily a single person. A group of persons considered in law as a single unit, might succeed as co-heirs to the Inheritance.