Ancestor

[L. Fr. auncestre; L. Lat. antecessor, from antecedere, to go before.] In the law of descents. One who has gone before, or preceded in the seisin or possession of real estate; a deceased person from whom an estate has passed to another by operation of law, in consequence of his decease. The person last seised of an estate of inheritance, and from whom such estate is transmitted by descent to the heir.

2 Bl. Com. 200, 208. 1 Steph. Com. 218.

See Antecessor, Predecessor, Ascendant. It is said in the old books, that the word ancestor, in the forensic sense, was not properly applied to the ancestor of a family, but either to the pre-possessor of an estate, or the predecessor in an office.

Termes de la ley

It seems to have originally been, like its correlative heir, strictly a nomen juris, though it acquired the popular sense in which it is now used, at a very early period.

Richardson's Diet

Its technical meaning was very significantly expressed by its Latin form, (antecessor, q. v.); but it appears from Bracton that even the latter word had begun to be used in his time, in senses not strictly appropriate, as where it was employed to denote a living person. Bract. fol.

67.

A similar misapplication of the word ancestor sometimes occurs in modern law; an instance of which is furnished by the recent English statute for the improvement of the law of inheritance, in which "descent" is defined to be "the title to inherit land by reason of consanguinity, as well where the heir shall be an ancestor, or collateral relation, as where he shall be a child or other issue."

Stat. 3 & 4 Will. IV., c. 106. 1 Steph. Com. 357, note (b).

Ancestor is here used in the sense of a living person in the ascending line of kindred, and in such connexion with the word heir as to confound the established relation between the terms. Ancestor and heir, are, in law, strictly the correlatives of each other, having a fixed meaning, and not admitting of being interchangeably or indifferently applied, as between two given persons. An ancestor is a deceased person from whom an estate has passed, just as an heir is the living person to whom it has passed; nor can the same person properly be said to stand in the relations both of ancestor and heir to another. That ancestor imports, ex vi termini, a deceased person, seems to be settled by the maxim which fixes the meaning of heir: Nemo est haeres viventis, (q. v.) See Heir, Descent.