Descent

Hereditary succession

Succession to the ownership of an estate by inheritanee, or by any act of law, as distinguisheil from “purchase.” Title by descent is the title by which one person, upon the death of another, acquires the real estate of the latter as his heir at law. 2 Bl. Comm. 201; Com. Dig. “Descent,” A, Deseents are of two serts,—lineal, as from father or gruudfather to son or grandson; or collatera!}, as from brother to brother, or cousin to cousin. They are also distinguished into mediate and immediate descents. But these terms are used in different senses. A descent may be said to be a mediate or immediate descent of the estate or right; orit may be said to be mediate or immediate, in regard to the mediateness or immediateness of the pedigree or consanguinity. Thus, a descent from the grandfather, who dies in possession, to the graudchild, the father being theu dead, or from the uncle to the nephew, the brother being dead, is, in the former sense, in law, immediate descent, although the one is collateral and the other lineal; for the heir is in the per, and notin the per and cui. On the other hand, with reference to the line of pedigree or consanguinity, a descent is often said to be immediate, when the ancestor from whom the party derives his blood is immediate, and without any intervening link or degrees; and mediate, when the kindred is derived from him imethhante aitero, another ancestor intervening between them. Thus a descent in lineals from father to son is in this sense immediate; but adescent from grandfather to grandson, the father being dead, or from unele te nephew, the brother being dead, is deemed mediate; the fatheranod the brother betug, in these latter cases, the »edizm deyerens, as it is called, of the descent or consanguinity.

6 Pet. 102.

Descent was denoted, in the Roman law, by the term “suecessto,” which is also used ——— by Bracton, and from which has been derived the succession of the Scotch and French jurisprudence,