Definition
Succession has two principal legal meanings that share a root concept — one person or entity stepping into the position of another — but operate in distinct legal contexts.
1. Transmission of a decedent's estate. The process by which the rights, property, obligations, and charges of a deceased person pass to that person's heirs or beneficiaries. Succession in this sense encompasses both testate succession (transfer directed by a valid will) and intestate succession (transfer governed by statute when no valid will exists). It is not merely the transfer of assets; it includes the transfer of liabilities. The succession is the whole of what the decedent leaves behind — assets and debts alike.
2. The estate itself. In Louisiana and civil-law jurisdictions, "succession" also refers to the aggregate estate of the deceased: the property, rights, and charges that together constitute what is transmitted. A researcher encountering "opening a succession" in Louisiana materials is reading about the initiation of estate administration, not about a sequence of heirs.
3. Corporate and institutional succession. In common law, succession also describes the capacity of a corporation or other legal entity to continue existing and hold property across changes in membership. A corporation "succeeds" itself perpetually; individual members come and go but the entity persists. This sense is largely obsolete as an independent legal concept — modern corporate law addresses it through doctrines of legal personality — but it appears throughout older authorities.
4. Succession of title in property law. The passage of a property interest from one holder to the next, whether by descent, devise, deed, or operation of law. This is the sense invoked when courts discuss "tacking" successive possessors' periods of adverse possession.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An act or process of following in sequence; the passing of powers, titles, or position from one person to the next; a series of things in order.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of succeeding, or following after; a following of things in order of time or place; a series of things so following." Illustrated by succession of crops, disasters, kings, or bishops.
The gap matters. In ordinary English, succession is about sequence — one thing following another. In law, succession is not merely sequence but transmission: the active legal transfer of rights and obligations. A succession of disasters involves no transfer of anything. A legal succession involves the full substitution of one legal actor for another, with all attendant rights and burdens. Researchers must be alert to this when parsing older texts where "succession" may float between the common and technical senses.
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Common Confusion
Succession vs. inheritance: These terms are often used interchangeably in lay usage but carry distinct technical weights in many jurisdictions. Inheritance typically refers to what a specific heir receives; succession refers to the entire process and estate. In civil-law systems, including Louisiana, the distinction is formalized — "succession" is the estate and the process, while inheritance describes the heir's share or right.
Succession vs. descent: Descent refers specifically to intestate passage of real property to heirs by operation of law. Succession is the broader term encompassing both testate and intestate transmission and, in civil-law contexts, both real and personal property.
Succession tax vs. inheritance tax vs. estate tax: These are related but distinct impositions. A succession tax, as Anderson's notes, is a tax on the devolution of title — a premium on the privilege of receiving property — not a direct tax on the property itself. Different jurisdictions structure these taxes differently, and historical sources use the terms inconsistently.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Testate succession: Transmission directed by a valid will.
Intestate succession: Transmission governed by statutory default rules when no valid will controls.
Forced succession (forced heirship): Found in Louisiana and civil-law systems; certain heirs cannot be fully disinherited regardless of testamentary intent.
Corporate succession: The perpetual legal continuity of a corporation independent of changes in membership.
Apostolic / lineal succession: A non-legal usage appearing in ecclesiastical and historical texts; researchers in legal-historical materials may encounter it in disputes over church property or institutional authority.
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Why It Matters in Research
The Louisiana dimension is essential. Louisiana's civil-law heritage means that "succession" in Louisiana materials carries technical meaning imported from French and Spanish civil law. Researchers using Louisiana cases or codes alongside common-law materials must resist assuming consistent usage. In Louisiana, the "succession" is an entity with legal standing during administration; this is not the case in most common-law states, where the estate is administered through a personal representative without the estate itself being treated as a quasi-juridical person in the same way.
Historical sources conflate the term's meanings without warning. Burrill, Bouvier, and the Black's editions all recognize both the civil-law and common-law senses but do not always cleanly separate them mid-entry. A passage that begins discussing testate succession may pivot to corporate succession without a header change. Read the full surrounding context before anchoring a definition.
Succession tax research requires careful chronology. The term "succession tax" was the standard American usage through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for what is now commonly called an inheritance or estate tax. Statutes, treatises, and case law from that period use "succession tax" to mean what modern researchers may label "death taxes." The constitutional arguments surrounding succession taxes — whether they are direct taxes or excise taxes — produced substantial litigation, and the terminology in those opinions does not map cleanly onto modern tax vocabulary.
Tacking in adverse possession requires attention to the succession-of-privity concept. For one adverse possessor to tack the prior possessor's time, there must be a legal succession — a voluntary transfer or other privity of title — between the two. The term "successive possessors" in property law invokes the same root concept as succession of estates: not mere sequence in time, but a connected transmission.
Presidential succession is a separate constitutional corpus. Materials on Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment use "succession" in the political-constitutional sense. Do not cross-contaminate this literature with probate succession research. The structural concept is shared; the legal rules are entirely distinct.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries largely agree on the core civil-law meaning. Bouvier, Black's (both editions), Burrill, and Anderson all lead with the Louisiana/civil-law formulation: succession as the transmission of rights and obligations of the deceased to heirs, and as the estate itself. The repetition across sources reflects Louisiana's unique position in American law as the jurisdiction where civilian succession doctrine operates directly.
Burrill adds comparative depth, noting the Scots law usage alongside the civil law and contrasting it with the common-law corporate succession doctrine. This is useful for researchers working in early American sources where Scottish legal influence occasionally appears in treatise literature.
Anderson's entry is notable for its explicit treatment of the succession tax, making clear that a succession tax is conceptually a tax on the act of transmission — the devolution of title — rather than on the underlying property. This distinction had constitutional significance in nineteenth-century litigation over state taxing power.
Rapalje & Lawrence's entry, as it appears in the available extract, addresses the relational vocabulary of succession — "successor" and "predecessor" — in the context of property settlements rather than estate succession. This usage is worth flagging: in older conveyancing and settlement materials, "successor" does not necessarily mean an heir; it may mean the next taker under a settlement instrument.
What the historical sources collectively underemphasize: the modern statutory framework for intestate succession, which in most U.S. jurisdictions is now governed by the Uniform Probate Code or state equivalents. The historical dictionaries reflect an older, more common-law and civilian framework. Researchers should not treat those accounts as descriptions of current law.
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Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana stands apart from all other U.S. jurisdictions by operating under a civil-law succession regime rooted in French and Spanish antecedents, including forced heirship rules that restrict testamentary freedom as to certain descendants. In the other forty-nine states, succession is governed by a mixture of common law and statute, with the Uniform Probate Code adopted in varying forms across many jurisdictions but not uniformly. International researchers should note that "succession" in European civil-law systems — particularly under the EU Succession Regulation (Brussels IV) — carries technical meanings that do not translate directly into U.S. domestic law.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: Presidential Succession and Disability — The Twenty-Fifth Amendment
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Adverse Possession — Tacking of Successive Possessors
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