HÆREDITAS JACENS (Lat.). In Civil Law. A prostrate inheritance. The inheritance left to a voluntary heir was so called so long as he had not mani- fested, either expressly or by silence, his acceptance or refusal of the inheritance, which, by a fiction of law, was said to sus- tain the person (sustinere personam) of the deceased, and not of the heir. Mack. C. L. § 685 a. An estate with no heir or legatee to take. Code, 10. 10., 1; Howe, Stud. Civ. L. 68. In English Law. An estate in abey- ance; that is, after the ancestor's death and before assumption of heir. Co. Litt. 342 b. An inheritance without legal owner, and therefore open to the first occupant. 2 Bla. Com. 259. HÆREDITAS LUCTUOSA. The suc- cession of parents to the estate of deceased children. 4 Kent 397. It was called a mournful inheritance because out of the ordinary and natural course of mortality. It was sometimes termed tristis successio. HÆRES. In Roman Law. One who succeeds to the rights and occupies the place of a deceased person, being appointed place by the will of the decedent. It is to be observed that the Roman hæres had not the slightest resemblance to the English heir. He corresponded in character and duties almost exactly with the executor under the English law. The institution of the hæres was the essential characteristic of a testament: if this was not done, the instrument was called a codicillus. Mack. C. L. $$ 632, 650. Who might not be instituted. Certain persons were not permitted to be instituted in this capacity: such as, persons not Roman citizens, slaves of such persons, persons not in being at the death of the testator, and corporations, unless especially privi- leged. Also, the emperor could not be made hæres with the condition that he should prosecute a suit of the testator against a subject. Nor could a sec- ond husband or wife be instituted hæres to a greater portion of the estate than was left to that child of the first marriage which received least by the will. So, a widow who married before the expiration of her year of mourning could not institute her second husband as hæres to more than a third of her estate. And a man who had legitimate children could not institute as hæredes a concubine and her children to more than a twelfth of his estate, nor the mother alone to more than one-twenty-fourth; Mack. C. L. $651. The institution of the hæres might be absolute or conditional. But the condition, to be valid, must be suspensive (condition precedent, see CONDITION), possible, and lawful. If, however, this rule was in- fringed, certain conditions, as the resolutive (condi- tion subsequent, see CONDITION), the impossible, and the immoral or indecent, were held nugatory, while others invalidated the appointment of the hæres,- as the preposterous and captatory, i. e. the appoint- ment of a hæres on condition that the appointee should, in turn, institute the testator or some other person hæres in his testament. In regard to limita- tions of time, they must, to be valid, commence ex die incerto. A condition that A should become hæres after a certain day, or that he should be hæres up to a day whether certain or uncertain, was nugatory. The testator might assign his rea- sons for the institution of a particular hæres, but a mistake in the facts upon which those reasons were based did not, in general, affect the validity of the appointment. The institution might be accom- panied with a direction that the hæres should apply the inheritance either wholly or in part to a speci fied purpose, which he was bound to comply with in case he accepted the inheritance, unless it was physically impossible to do so, or unless the hæres himself was the only person affected by such direc- tions. The hæres might be instituted either simply, without any interest in the estate, or with a fixed share therein, or with regard to some particular thing; Mack. C. L. $ 653. It was customary, in order to provide against a failure to accept on the part of the direct hæres, to substitute one or more hæredes to him. This substitution might be made in various forms; but the result was the same in all, that if the first of the direct hæredes failed to accept the inheritance, whether from indisposition, permanent incapacity, or from dying before the testator, the substitute stood in his stead. There might be several degrees of substitutes, each ready to act in case of the failure of all the preceding; and the rule was substitutus substituto est substitu- tus instituto: which meant that on a failure of all the intermediate substitutes, the lowest in rank succeeded to the position of the instituted hæres. This was called substitutio vulgaris. There was an- other, the substitutio pupillaris, which was nothing more than the appointment, by the testator, of a hæres to a minor child under his authority, which appointment was good in case the child died after the testator, and sti consequently, responsible for all the debts of the deceased, even if the estate left