Inheritance – between the Bible and the Civil Code

Abstract

Private law institutions, such as inheritance, marriage, engagement managed to be transmitted through the entire human history, while maintaining their decisive role in forming family ties, or with respect to reasons for property issues. This article aims at approaching a research on the institution of heritage and its customary and legislative transformations, building a bridge in time between the text of the Bible and the Civil Code. The analysis is focused on the importance given to the institution in the two different historical moments, the principles that would govern it, the way to transfer the property right by mortis causa. Thus, it will highlight both surprising similarities and differences arising from the social, legal or religious culture of the time. The method of dividing inheritance, the situation of the surviving husband, the rules of escheat, the existence of forced heir are just some of the issues addressed in the paper, all these analyses leading to an unequivocal conclusion: Inheritance meant and represented, from time immemorial, both an engine