Succession Act 1965 section 11

Abolition of existing rules of descent, escheat, etc.

Section 11 abolishes the old feudal rules governing how property passed on death, including primogeniture, dower, curtesy, and escheat, replacing them with the modern succession framework established by the Act.

• All pre-existing rules and methods for determining how property descended on death are abolished, except where they still apply to an estate tail (a special form of land ownership passing to direct descendants).
• Dower (a widow's automatic right to a share of her husband's land) and tenancy by the curtesy (a widower's automatic right to his wife's land) are both abolished.
• Escheat — the reversion of property to the State or to an intermediate landlord where a person died without heirs — is abolished.
• The State's right to claim property where there are no next-of-kin is preserved under a new mechanism in section 73, where the State acts as the ultimate intestate successor rather than claiming through the old feudal concept of escheat.