colegatees

Updated: May 17, 2025

By our constitution, however, we have made an improvement in this matter, and allowed the legatee's heir to exercise the right of selection, although the legatee has not done so personally in his lifetime; which enactment, through our careful attention to the subject, contains the further provision, that if there are either several colegatees to whom a right of selection has been bequeathed, and who cannot agree in their choice, or several coheirs of a single legatee, who differ through some wishing to choose this thing and others that, the question shall be decided by fortune the legacy not being extinguished, which many of the jurists in an ungenerous spirit wished to make the rule ; that is to say, that lots shall be drawn, and he on whom the lot falls shall have a priority of choice over the rest.

- The Institutes of Justinian