The evolution of inheritance law and its relationship to family law and the law of obligations: Soviet and contemporary perspectives

Abstract

In different historical periods, inheritance law was considered to be an institute of various branches of legislation. Some approaches referred to it as social security law or family law; over time, inheritance law started to be examined in the context of civil law relationships.The inheritance institute, one of the oldest in civil law, is very conservative and changes extremely slowly; however, it should correspond to specific economic relations. Inheritance law is inextricably linked to national traditions and peculiarities,which should be recognized as critical to understanding this branch of lawand its development in Russia.Moreover,the study of inheritance law is impossible without understanding the neighboring civil law institutions,such as various legal dispositions of inheritance in the future,as well as the institution of lifetime maintenance,which has a long historyof enforcement in Russia.The article addresses two grounds of succession: a) succession by law, where the property passes to the people named in the law, and b) succession bywill,where the deceased person names his or her heirs in a unique document called a will.