The next stage in the development of succession is presented by an arrangement which was common in Germany, viz., by the management of property under the rule of so-called Ganerbschaft. Ganerben is the same as the Latin coheredes, comparticipes, con sortes. A capitulary of 818 mentions such communities of heirs holding in common (cf. Boretius Capitularia, i. 282). While the community lasted none of the shareholders could dispose of any part of the property by his single will. Legally and economically all transactions had to proceed from common consent and common resolve. This did not preclude the possibility of any one among the shareholders claiming his own portion, in which case part of the property had to be meted out to him according to fair compu tation (swascara). There was no legal constraint over the share holders to remain in common; division could be brought about either by common consent or by claims of individuals, and yet the constant occurrence of these settlements of co-heirs shows that it was more profitable to keep together and not to break up the unit of property by division. The customary union of co-heirs appears in this way as a corrective of the strict legal principle of equal rights between heirs of the same degree. In English prac tice the joint management of co-heirs is not so fully described, but there can be no doubt that under the older Saxon rule admit ting heirs of the same degree to equal rights in succession the interests of economic efficiency were commonly preserved by the carrying on of common husbandry without any realization of the concurrent claims which would have broken up the object of suc cession. 'This accounts for the fact that notwithstanding the prevalence among the early English of the rule admitting all the sons or heirs in the same position to equal shares in the inheritance, the organic units of hides, yardlands, etc., are kept up in the course of centuries. In the management of the so-called gavelkind succession in Kent partition was legally possible and was some times effected, but there was the customary reaction against it in the shape of keeping up the "yokes" and "sulungs." A trace of the same kind of union between co-heirs appears in the so-called garage communities so often mentioned in Domesday Book.
In all these cases the principle of union and joint manage ment is kept up by purely economic means and considerations.
The legal possibility of partition is admitted by the side of it.
It is interesting to watch two divergent lines of further develop ment springing from this common source ; on the one side we see the full realization of individual right resulting in frequent divisions; on the other side we watch the rise of legal restraints on subdivision resulting in the establishment, in respect of certain categories of property, of rules excluding the plurality of heirs for the sake of preserving the unity of the household. The first system is, of course, most easily carried out in countries where individ ualistic types of husbandry prevail. In Europe it is especially prevalent in the south with its intense cultivation of the arable and its habits of wine and olive growing. We shall not wonder, therefore, that the unrestricted subdivision among heirs is repre sented most completely by Roman law. Not to speak of the fact that already in the XII. Tables the principal mode of inheritance was considered to be inheritance by will while intestate succession came in as a subsidiary expedient, we have to notice that there is no check on the dispersion of property among heirs of the same degree. The only survival of a regime of family community may be found in the distinction between heredes sui (heirs of their own) and heredes extranei (outside heirs of the deceased). The first entered by their own right and took possession of property which had belonged to them potentially even during their an cestor's life; the latter drew their claims from their relationship to the deceased, which did not give them a direct hold on the property in question. Apart from that, the civil law of ancient Rome favoured complete division and the same principle is represented in all European legislation derived from Roman law or strongly influenced by it. Sometimes, as in the French Code Civil, even the wish of the owner cannot alter the course of such • succession as no person can make a will depriving any of his children of their legal share.
of view is expressed by the Norwegian customs as to Odal. The principal estates of the country,.which, according to the law of the Gulathing have descended through five generations in the same family, cannot be dispersed and alienated at pleasure. They are considered as rightly belonging to the kindred with which a historical connection has been established. In order to keep these estates within the kindred they descended chiefly to men ; women could inherit only in e: ceptional cases, such as the daughter of a man who has left no sons or the sister of one who has left no children and no brothers. Nieces and first-cousins were admitted in the sense that they had to pass the property to their nearest male heir, and they might, in certain eventualities, be bought out by the nearest male relative. A second peculiarity of Odal con sists in the right of relations descending from one of the common ancestors to prevent strangers from acquiring Odal estate. Among the peasants however it is felt that a farm ought not to be par celled up into smaller holdings, and in the common case of several heirs succeeding to the farm, they generally decide among them selves who is to remain in charge of the ancestral household ; the rest are compensated.