9.2 Provisions Relating to Inheritance (the Statutory Scheme)

The classes of heirs (the Code's design, by principle): Class Members Sharing Class One The immediate family: the surviving spouse, the children (including the adopted — Unit 7; the children of void marriages protected — Unit 2), the parents Concurrent taking; equal shares within the class; the mother's and father's equal standing Class Two The siblings; the grandchildren (the predeceased child's children taking the stirpal share — the representation principle) The class exhausts before the next Class Three (remoter) The near relatives in the statutory order: grandparents, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces Class-by-class exhaustion Default No heir at all Escheat — the State's/local body's taking The equality rules (the post-reform core): Sons and daughters inherit equally — marital status irrelevant (the married daughter's exclusion, the return-on-marriage condition — all abolished; the 11th Amendment's and Gender Equality Act's work completed by the Code 2074); The widow's full heirship — the jiyuni sustenance-right (Unit 8's history) converted to ownership; the widow's remarriage costs her nothing; The spouse's position both directions — the husband inherits the wife, the wife the husband; Representation — the predeceased heir's branch taking through the deceased heir's own issue (the grandchild's stirpal share); The unborn — the child en ventre sa mère protected (born alive, the share holds); The customary layer — where the statute defers to…