inheritance

inheritance, in law

inheritance, in law: see heir.

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inheritance, in biology

inheritance, in biology: see heredity.

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inheritance

Devolution of property on an heir or heirs upon the death of its owner. In civil law jurisdictions it is called succession. The concept depends on a common acceptance of the notion of private ownership of goods and property. Under some systems, land is considered communal property and rights to it are redistributed, rather than bequeathed, on the death of a community member. In many countries, a minimum portion of the decedent's estate must be assigned to the surviving spouse and often to the progeny as well. Intestacy laws, which govern the inheritance of estates whose distribution is not directed by a will, universally view kinship between the decedent and the beneficiary as a primary consideration. Inheritance usually entails payment of an inheritance tax. See also inheritance tax; intestate succession; probate.

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In object technology, the ability of one class of objects to inherit properties from a higher class.

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(programming, object-oriented)

inheritance - In object-oriented programming, the ability to derive new classes from existing classes. A derived class (or "subclass") inherits the instance variables and methods of the "base class" (or "superclass"), and may add new instance variables and methods. New methods may be defined with the same names as those in the base class, in which case they override the original one. For example, bytes might belong to the class of integers for which an add method might be defined. The byte class would inherit the add method from the integer class. See also Liskov substitution principle, multiple inheritance.