Impossibility Results about Inheritance and Order of Death

Wang Y (2022) Impossibility results about inheritance and order of death. PLoS ONE 17(11): e0277430. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277430

27 Pages Posted: 18 May 2021 Last revised: 11 Nov 2022

See all articles by Yue Wang

Yue Wang

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Date Written: November 10, 2022

Abstract

If several relatives died with no will, the order of their deaths could affect the inheritance result. When the order of death is unknown, there are three approaches to determine the inheritance result in this simultaneous death situation: apply an inheritance method that is not affected by the order of death; artificially assign the order of death; stipulate that persons with unknown orders do not inherit each other. The last approach is adopted by the current French Civil Code (denoted as the French Approach). We prove that under some basic requirements, the French Approach is the only valid solution to the order of death problem. Therefore, the inheritance law of a country that does not adopt the French Approach either has unsolvable inheritance problems or violates basic requirements. In the appendix, we study the existence and uniqueness of inheritance methods that are invariant for different orders of death and only violate one requirement, such as gender equality.

Keywords: Inheritance; Order of death; Impossibility result; Intestate succession law; Commoriente

Suggested Citation

Wang, Yue, Impossibility Results about Inheritance and Order of Death (November 10, 2022). Wang Y (2022) Impossibility results about inheritance and order of death. PLoS ONE 17(11): e0277430. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277430, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3846032 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3846032

Yue Wang (Contact Author)

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) ( email )

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