In this article Professor Friedman describes the various ways in which, in the American legal system, interests succeed from generation to generation. Some pass within the formal system of property law while others have their own peculiar modes of succession. Regardless of the method, the result in each case is the reproduction of social institutions. Throughout, this article stresses the tensions between the competing social and economic principles involved in systems of succession. The complexity of the law of succession comes from the desire to balance these competing principles; this balancing in turn not only reflects the part social values play in the form and substance of the law, but shows the effects of a legal system of succession on social values as well.