User Contributed Dictionary
Noun
- A system of inheritance in which the youngest son or youngest child inherits an estate.
See also
Extensive Definition
Ultimogeniture, also known as postremogeniture or
junior right, is the tradition of inheritance by the last-born
of the entirety of, or a privileged position in, a parent's wealth, estate or
office. The tradition has been far rarer historically than primogeniture, inheritance
by the first-born.
Ultimogeniture serves the circumstances where the
youngest is "keeping the hearth", taking care of the parents and
continuing at home, whereas elder children have had time to succeed
"out in the world" and provide for themselves - or having received
some of their share earlier, for example when marrying and founding
an own family. Remembering the then usual low age at death, the
system has been relatively impractical for impartible inheritance
during past centuries. Ultimogeniture has been more suitable to
officeholders and owners who have themselves been adults already
for several decades (such as monarchs who happen to be elderly) and
are leaving children who are more or less all mature adults.
In medieval England, the
principle of patrilineal ultimogeniture (i.e. inheritance by the
youngest surviving male child) was known as Borough-English. In
1327, a court case found it to be the tradition in the borough of Nottingham,
whereas in areas influenced by Anglo-Norman
culture, primogeniture was prevalent. The tradition was also found
across many rural areas of England where lands were held in tenure
by socage. It
also occurred at copyhold manors in Surrey, Middlesex,
Suffolk and
Sussex.
In medieval Scandinavia, where partible
inheritance was the norm, there are indications that within
that partibility tradition, youngest son had a privilege to receive
the parent's house, or ancestral seat, or family manor. This may
simply be a reflection of a practicality that elder brothers, when
marrying, had often already acquired or built their own houses, and
were not in need of another, whereas the youngest much more rarely
had done so, either living with his own family at the ancestral
house to care for parents, or having not yet grown old enough to
marry.
The tradition of youngest having the privilege of
receiving the ancestral seat was so strong that in some wealthy
noble families with more manors than needed for each heir to have a
place, the privilege of ultimogeniture was still practised. The
privilege may have held some possibility to get a practically
larger share than elder siblings, for example to compensate for
grants the parents already routinely had made when providing
benefits to young families of elder siblings. There are also
indications that the ancestral seat could have passed to a daughter
and her family, with sons receiving other properties. This may have
been the consequence of another tradition, that daughters received
family properties from those
held by mother, and that sons received their inheritance from
their father's familial holdings.
In Kyūshū and
some other areas of Japan, property was
traditionally apportioned by a modified version of ultimogeniture
known as masshi souzoku (末子相続). An estate was distributed equally
among all sons, except that the youngest son received a double
share as a reward for caring for the elderly parents in their last
years. This tradition was prohibited by the Meiji
legal code in the late nineteenth century.
Ultimogeniture seems also to have been practised
in the Ancient Near East. In
early Greek myths,
kingship was conferred by marriage to a tribal nymph, who was selected by
ultimogeniture or success in a race. http://uk.geocities.com/lucath/myths.html
Some scholars have noted that many Biblical
characters are described as youngest sons or daughters and have
inferred a prehistoric ultimogeniture tradition in the Holy Land.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=729&letter=J
Ultimogeniture of the ancestral seat was also
traditional in Mongolia, where
Genghis
Khan passed the heart of the Mongol
Empire to his fourth son, Tolui
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200301/the.arts.of.the.mongols.htm
as the empire with its conquests was to be partitioned, and in
areas of Myanmar and
China, where
it is traditional among by the Rawang and T'ring people for
older sons to move away on reaching maturity and for only the
youngest son to remain and inherit. http://victoria.linguistlist.org/~lapolla/rda/EO.htm
Like other forms of hereditary succession,
ultimogeniture was laden with problems. Elder siblings deprived of
property could potentially use their experience to coerce younger
siblings into relinquishing some or all of their inheritance. In
addition, fratricide,
among other means, was often employed to eliminate potential
challenges from younger siblings and their political supporters, as
in the case of Alexander
the Great's succession to the Macedonian throne.
Other methods of succession
-
- Main article: Succession order
- Primogeniture
- Seniority
- Tanistry
- Degree of kinship, i.e proximity of blood
- Elective monarchy, election from among one family
- "Lottery"
- Rotation (Taking turns: seniority, tanistry, lottery and election are used and practical ways to organize rotation. Rotation may have aimed at some balance between branches of the House or the Clan.)
- Gavelkind
See also
References
- The Penguin Dictionary of British History, ed. Judith Gardiner
- Are the Japanese Selfish, Altruistic or Dynastic? Charles Yuji Horioka
ultimogeniture in Chinese: 幼子繼承制
ultimogeniture in Japanese:
末子相続