Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Inheritance

instance, if the assets did not cover the debts, or if the heir had died already and the will had not been edited), substitute heirs could also be named [18] . Once at least one heir was named, the writer of the will could stop, but there were additional options available. Before the principal division among the heirs, specific gifts could be given to named individuals [18, 19] . These gifts are called “lega cies,” and the persons who received them are called “legatees.” Originally, there were no limitations on these legacies, but over time they came to be abused (or at least so it was thought). That is, some wills gave away so much in legacies that the heirs were left with nothing but debts. Different solutions were tried, but the one that was ultimately enacted (by a lex Falcidia of 40 bc) was a rule that at least one-fourth of the estate had to be reserved for the heirs. With some small partial exceptions to be addressed later, the writer of the will had great freedom to choose his benefi ciaries. On the one hand, no one had an absolute claim to the inheritance. In particular, it should be noted that the eldest child had no special rights, as they do in some systems. Nor did male children have any advantage over their sisters. Nor did spouses have any particular rights. On the other hand, there were only a few classes of persons excluded from inheriting. Beneficiaries had to be Roman citizens. A beneficiary had to be a “specified person” at the time of the writing of the will: no corporate entities (though some, such as cities, were eventually permitted to be beneficiaries; see [19] ) and no persons not yet conceived. Most importantly, the writer could specify only his

155