Right Heirs Law and Legal Definition
Right heirs are those persons on whom the law casts the real estate of a decedent or admits to participate in the distribution of his/her personal estate.
Right heirs is a term formerly in use in the creation of estates tail to distinguish the preferred to whom the estate was limited from the heirs in general, to whom upon failure of the preferred heir and his/her line the remainder over was usually finally limited. With the abolition of estates tail the term has fallen into disuse. [Brown v. Wadsworth, 168 N.Y. 225, 237 (N.Y. 1901)]
