Immediate Descent

Descents have long been distinguished as mediate and immediate, but these terms are susceptible of different interpretations, whence some 'confusion has been introduced into their legal discussion, since different judges have used them in different senses. _ In immediate descents there can be no impediment but what ariseth in the parties themselves, but in mediate descents, it is agreed, the disability of being an alien or attainted, in him that is the medius antecessor, will disable the other, though he have no such disability. Where the question is whether the inheritance by a brother from his brother, the father being an alien, is mediate or immediate, it is held after much discussion that the inheritance is immediate, so as not to be affected by the alienage of the father. It is held that in tracing the line of inheritance between brothers or their descendants it is not necessary to name the father as their common ancestor, and that alienism in any ancestor whom it was not necessary to name in tracing such inheritance or descent does not have the effect to impede it.

6 Pet. (U. S.) 112; 155 111. 604.