Inheritance in the context of Private property

An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (either their own or that of their superior or employer, public or legally private). The term officer is close to being a synonym, but it has more military connotations. An elected official is a person who is an official by virtue of an election.

Officials may also be appointed ex officio (by virtue of another office, often in a specified capacity, such as presiding, advisory, secretary). Some official positions may be inherited. A public official is an official of central or local government. A person who currently holds an office is referred to as an incumbent. Used as an adjective, something "official" refers to something endowed with governmental or other authoritative recognition or mandate, as in official language, official gazette, or official scorer.

A monarch (/ˈmɒnərk/) is a head of state for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch usually exercises the highest authority and power in the state. Usually, a monarch either personally inherits the lawful right to exercise the state's sovereign rights (often referred to as the throne or the crown) or is selected by an established process from a family or cohort eligible to provide the nation's monarch. Alternatively, an individual may proclaim oneself monarch, or even usurp power, as many Ancient Greek tyrants did. If a young child is crowned the monarch, then a regent is often appointed to govern until the monarch reaches the requisite adult age to rule.

A legislator, or lawmaker, is a person who writes and passes laws, especially someone who is a member of a legislature. Legislators are often elected by the people, but they can be appointed, or hereditary. Legislatures may be supra-national (for example, the European Parliament), national, such as the Japanese Diet, sub-national as in provinces, or local.

In inheritance, a hereditary successor is a person who inherits an indivisible title or office after the death of the previous title holder. The hereditary line of succession may be limited to heirs of the body, or may pass also to collateral lines, in case of extinction of heirs of the body, depending on the succession rules. These concepts are in use in English inheritance law..

Main concepts for hereditary succession are usually either heir male or heir general – see further primogeniture (agnatic, cognatic, and also equal). "Heir male" is a genealogical term which specifically means "senior male by masculine primogeniture in the legitimate descent of an individual"

Ownership is the state or fact of legal possession and control over property, which may be any asset, tangible or intangible. Ownership can involve multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties.

The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex: one can gain, transfer, and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, win it in a bet, receive it as a gift, inherit it, find it, receive it as damages, earn it by doing work or performing services, make it, or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure, seizure, or taking. Ownership implies that the owner of a property also owns any economic benefits or deficits associated with the property.

In genealogy and evolutionary biology, an ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder, or a forebear, is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law, the person from whom an estate has been inherited."

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.

Unlike guardianship or other systems designed for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction. Historically, some societies have enacted specific laws governing adoption, while others used less formal means (notably contracts that specified inheritance rights and parental responsibilities without an accompanying transfer of filiation). Modern systems of adoption, arising in the 20th century, tend to be governed by comprehensive statutes and regulations.

The nobility of China represented the upper strata of aristocracy in premodern China, acting as the ruling class until the late seventh to ninth centuries during the Tang dynasty, and remaining a significant feature of the traditional social structure until the end of the imperial period.

The concepts of hereditary sovereignty, peerage titles, and noble families existed as early as the semi-mythical and early historical periods, but the systems of enfeoffment and establishment only developed in the Zhou dynasty, by the end of which a clear delineation of ranks had emerged. This process was a function of the interface between the ancient patriarchal clan system, an increasingly sophisticated apparatus of state, and an evolving geopolitical situation. While the imperial peerage system described here refers to noble titles formally conferred and inherited under state authority, the so-called “aristocracy” discussed in relation to the medieval period (roughly the 3rd to 9th centuries) was not defined by such titles. Instead, it denoted a broader social stratum of powerful lineages whose elite status derived primarily from pedigree and bureaucratic officeholding rather than from imperially sanctioned noble ranks.

A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is important to economics and inheritance.

Household models include families, blended families, shared housing, group homes, boarding houses, houses of multiple occupancy (UK), and single room occupancy (US). In feudal societies, the royal household and medieval households of the wealthy included servants and other retainers.

In anthropology, a lineage is a unilineal descent group that traces its ancestry to a demonstrably shared ancestor, known as the apical ancestor. Lineages are formed through relationships traced either exclusively through the maternal line (matrilineage), paternal line (patrilineage), or some combination of both (ambilineal). The cultural significance of matrilineal or patrilineal descent varies greatly, shaping social structures, inheritance patterns, and even rituals across societies.

A monarch is the head of a monarchy, a form of government in which a state is ruled by an individual who normally rules for life or until abdication, and typically inherits the throne by birth. Monarchs may be autocrats (as in all absolute monarchies) or may be ceremonial figureheads, exercising only limited or no reserve powers at all, with actual authority vested in a legislature and/or executive cabinet (as in many constitutional monarchies). In many cases, a monarch will also be linked with a state religion. Most states only have a single monarch at any given time, although a regent may rule when the monarch is a minor, not present, or otherwise incapable of ruling. Cases in which two monarchs rule simultaneously over a single state, as is the current situation in Andorra, are known as coregencies.

A variety of titles are applied in English; for example, "king" and "queen", "prince" and "princess", "grand duke" and "grand duchess", "emperor" and "empress". Although they will be addressed differently in their local languages, the names and titles in the list below have been styled using the common English equivalent. Roman numerals, used to distinguish related rulers with the same name, have been applied where typical.

A will and testament is a legal document that expresses a person's (testator) wishes as to how their property (estate) is to be distributed after their death and as to which person (executor) is to manage the property until its final distribution. For the distribution (devolution) of property not determined by a will, see inheritance and intestacy.

Though it has been thought a "will" historically applied only to real property, while "testament" applied only to personal property (thus giving rise to the popular title of the document as "last will and testament"), records show the terms have been used interchangeably. Thus, the word "will" validly applies to both personal and real property. A will may also create a testamentary trust that is effective only after the death of the testator.

A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: Senatus), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: senex meaning "the elder" or "old man") and therefore considered wiser and more experienced members of the society or ruling class. However the Roman Senate was not the ancestor or predecessor of modern parliamentarism in any sense, because the Roman senate was not a de jure legislative body.

Many countries have an assembly named a senate, composed of senators who may be elected, appointed, have inherited the title, or gained membership by other methods, depending on the country. Modern senates typically serve to provide a chamber of "sober second thought" to consider legislation passed by a lower house, whose members are usually elected. Most senates have asymmetrical duties and powers compared with their respective lower house meaning they have special duties, for example to fill important political positions or to pass special laws. Conversely many senates have limited powers in changing or stopping bills under consideration and efforts to stall or veto a bill may be bypassed by the lower house or another branch of government.

In English law, heirs of the body is the principle that certain types of property pass to a descendant of the original holder, recipient or grantee according to a fixed order of kinship. Upon the death of the grantee, a designated inheritance such as a parcel of land, a peerage, or a monarchy, passes automatically to that living, legitimate, natural descendant of the grantee who is most senior in descent according to primogeniture, males being preferred, however, over their sisters regardless of relative age; and thereafter the property continues to pass to subsequent descendants of the grantee, according to the same formula, upon the death of each subsequent heir.

Baronies created by writ of summons to Parliament usually descend to heirs of the body of the grantee, and may thus be inherited by females. By the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Acts of Union 1707, the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland descends to heirs of the body of the Electress Sophia of Hanover who are not Catholics or married to Catholics, subject to subsequent modification by Parliament (e.g. His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 and the Succession to the Crown Act 2013).

A lineal or direct descendant, in legal usage, is a blood relative in a person's direct line of descent – the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. In a legal procedure sense, lineal descent refers to the acquisition of estate by inheritance by parent from grandparent and by child from parent, whereas collateral descent refers to the acquisition of estate or real property by inheritance by sibling from sibling, and cousin from cousin.

Adopted children, for whom adoption statutes create the same rights of heirship as children of the body, come within the meaning of the term "lineal descendants," as used in a statute providing for the non-lapse of a devise where the devisee predeceases the testator but leaves lineal descendants.