questionable peculiarities of German law is the relentless pursuit of unlimited family succession.80 Even relatives so distantly related to the deceased that he is unlikely ever to have heard of them can have a right to succeed. This was regarded, at least by some of those responsible for drafting the BGB, as a matter of extreme significance: any limitation would have been not only arbitrary but also a step on the slippery slope to the abolition of private succession, and so on to socialism.81 This reasoning looks rather odd to us today, particularly given that in the other European systems (with the exception of Scotland) family succession regarding collateral relatives is implemented only in a restricted form, without those systems having succumbed to the temptations of socialism. In the course of the twentieth century these restrictions have been considerably tightened.82 England and the Nordic countries, for example, do not even regard cousins as sufficiently closely related to the deceased to be granted a succession right.83 Other legal systems display similarly outdated peculiarities. Thus, French succession law still recognizes the strange institution of la fente successorale.84 If the deceased is survived neither by descendants nor by siblings, but by a parent, the estate is split into two halves, with one of them going to the surviving parent and the other to the surviving ascendants of the other parent.85 Historically, this was regarded as appropriate in the light of the maximpaterna paternis, materna maternis:86 since it could be assumed that the deceased had received his estate in equal parts from his father’s and his mother’s side, it appeared inequitable to let it go in 80 § 1922 BGB; see Reinhard Zimmermann, ‘Intestate Succession in Germany’, in Reid et al. 2007, 181–233 at 191–4. 81 See, for example, Gottfried (von) Schmitt, Entwurf des Rechtes der Erbfolge für das Deutsche Reich(Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1879) printed in Werner Schubert (ed.), Die Vorlagen der Redaktoren für die erste Kommission zur Ausarbeitung des Entwurfs eines Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches: Erbrecht Teil 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984), 708. 82 See Reid et al. 2007, 475–7. 83 Administration of Estates Act 1925 section 46 (1) (v); Jens Scherpe, ‘Intestate Succession in the Nordic Countries, in Reid et al. 2007, 307–322 at 311. 84 See Cécile Pérès, ‘Intestate Succession in France’, in Reid et al. 2007, 33–51 at 40–1; Reid et al. 2007, 457, 471–2. 85 Code civil Art. 747 f 86 See Reid et al. 2007, 455–6. part v • comparative legal history • reinhard zimmermann 252
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=