Intestate Successions
These are inheritances that are not governed by a will, but simply by the applicable law in the corresponding country.
These laws, with their different nuances, grant the inheritance to the closest relatives, under the principle that the closest relative displaces the more distant one. However, although most systems set a kinship limit after which one does not inherit, many legislations allow very distant relatives to inherit, even without any limit on the degree of kinship (Ohio State Code, Section 2105.06, subsection i; New Jersey State law for persons deceased before February 27, 2005, some Australian jurisdictions, Illinois State Intestate Succession Act, 5/2-1, subsection g, among others).
Other regimes, without going as far as the previous ones, set the kinship limit broadly. Thus, the Civil Code of Quebec (art. 683) allows descendants of great-great-grandparents—third cousins—to inherit, and the old Italian Civil Code allowed up to tenth-degree relatives (descendants of the great-great-grandparents’ parents).
Furthermore, the existence of unclaimed inheritance rights may originate from the legal rule according to which, even if the heir has never physically received the assets of an inheritance left in their favor, upon their death they transmit the inheritance right they held over those (never received) assets to their own heirs. For example, if A made a will in favor of their lifelong friend B, and B dies without having received A’s assets, B transmits their right to those assets to their own heirs, C and D. In this way, C and D possess rights to assets originating from a person (A) whom they perhaps never knew.
Evidently, the migrations of the 19th, 20th, and even the current century, along with the globalization of economic transactions and the possibility of saving or acquiring assets in countries other than one’s country of residence, increase the probabilities of unclaimed inheritances.
Fortunately, the possibility of locating the beneficiaries of these assets is also greater, as is the protection granted to them by legal regulations.