Skip to main content
disinheritance

disinheritance

1 8.4
Stopping someone from inheriting money or property from a will
  • noun
  • /ˌdɪsɪnˈhɛrɪtəns/
translation icon : desheredación
  • After learning about her disinheritance, she felt betrayed and angry.

Examples

  • Ordinance marriage also gave women and their children new disinheritance rights.

    Academic text (1994)
  • No plans for disinheritance, were there?

    Fiction book (1990)
  • His mother has demanded he break the engagement or suffer disinheritance.

  • His plot centers instead on securing a wife of "the best blood" to produce an "offspring to inherit and preserve his father's illustrious name" or face disinheritance.

    Academic text (2014)
  • "The atmosphere of Leon's childhood was rife with nostalgia and elegies to lost homelands, a sense of exile and disinheritance; yet it was leavened with recognition of the freedom and opportunity afforded by the adopted Canadian home.

    Academic text (1997)
  • The family's decision to impose disinheritance left him without a share of the estate.

  • The lawyer explained the implications of disinheritance to the heirs gathered for the reading of the will.

Antonyms

75 3.2

Money or property left to someone when a person dies

Surface Forms

Morphology

disinheritance = disinherit (transparent) = dis + inherit + ance

This is a standard noun formation from the verb 'disinherit', meaning the act or result of disinheriting.

Etymology

The word disinheritance comes from the prefix dis-, meaning 'not', and inherit, meaning 'to receive from a relative'. So, disinheritance is the act of making someone 'not' an heir, taking away their right to inherit money or property.