reformed, sometimes repeatedly. Conspicuously, the surviving spouse increasingly ousts the deceased’s surviving ascendants and collateral relatives; in that respect, the German-language codifications today appear to be comparatively antiquated. The central challenge for the law remains the coordination of the surviving spouse with the deceased’s descendants. Here we encounter, first, a widespread desire to allow the surviving spouse to remain in her familiar environment and to ensure her standard of living. Second, coordination along the lines of granting a right of ownership to the descendants and a right of usufruct over the entire estate, or parts thereof, to the surviving spouse is on the retreat internationally.77 And, third, it is remarkable that a number of more recent succession regulations have come out in favour of a solution according to which the surviving spouse receives medium-sized and small estates (as in England) or even large estates (as in the Netherlands) in their entirety.78 The historical and comparative survey thus puts German law into perspective. The rules laid down in the BGBare, to quote Bernhard Windscheid again, ‘a moment in the development’; a development driven by forces affecting all our legal systems in Europe.79 One of them is the demographic change: typically, the deceased’s descendants no longer depend on the estate to the same extent as the surviving spouse. By the time of death they have, as a rule, established themselves in life and can thus rely on their own income to support themselves and their family. The surviving spouse, on the other hand, will often today, because of vastly improved medical standards, face much higher expenses than in earlier times. Four, the historical and comparative perspective will also reveal outdated quirks and idiosyncrasies in any national legal system. Among the 77 See also Walter Pintens, ‘Tendencies in European Succession Law’, in Torstein Frantzen (ed.), Inheritance Law: Challenges and Reform(Berlin: BWV, 2013) 9–23 at 11; Reid et al. 2007, 497. 78 Roger Kerridge, ‘Intestate Succession in England and Wales’, in Reid et al. 2007, 323–48 at 343–5): Wilbert D. Kolkman, ‘Intestate Succession in the Netherlands’, in Reid et al. 2007, 224–47 at 241–6. 79 See above, n. 40. understanding the law in a historical and comparative perspective 251
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