Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

somewhat over time. At the same time, a device evolved that allowed some restrictions to be evaded (by instructing a ben eficiary to pass on wealth). The first section will explain the two ways in which a Roman will could distribute the deceased’s property; as we will see, there were rules about both the substance and the form of the will. The following section will consider what hap pened when someone died without leaving a will.

Wills

The formal requirements of the will were that it be written, that it be in Latin (a rule eventually relaxed), that it be wit nessed by seven other Roman citizens, and that it name the heir(s) by means of established legal formulas. Also, if the direct descendants were not to be made heirs, they had to be explicitly disinherited. Every Roman will had to name one or more “heirs.” In the simplest case, the heir took on everything the deceased had to her name: property, cash, debts, obligations. If there were more than one heir, then every one of them became a joint owner of the property (and joint debtor). The shares could be in any proportion spelled out in the will (say, one person inheriting two-thirds of the estate with two other persons getting one sixth each), but equal division was perhaps the most common ( [3] shows a much more elaborate division). In case one or more of the would-be heirs did not accept the inheritance (for

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