This trustee also
could make use of the fiction, and sue as if he had been the
bankrupt's heir. /4/ We are told by one of the great
jurisconsults that in general universal successors stand in the
place of heirs. /5/
The Roman heir, with one or two exceptions, was always a
universal successor; and the fiction of heirship, as such, could
hardly be used with propriety except to enlarge the sphere of
universal successions. So far as it extended, however, all the
consequences attached to the original fiction of identity between
heir and ancestor followed as of course.
[362] To recur to the case of rights acquired by prescription,
every universal successor could add the time of his predecessor's
adverse use to his own in order to make out the right. There was
no addition, legally speaking, but one continuous possession.
The express fiction of inheritance perhaps stopped here. But when
a similar joinder of times was allowed between a legatee or
devisee (legatarius) and his testator, the same explanation was
offered. It was said, that, when a specific thing was left to a
person by will, so far as concerned having the benefit of the
time during which the testator had been in possession for the
purpose of acquiring a title, the legatee was in a certain sense
quasi an heir.
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