Families face tough decisions about who will care for aging parents and how estates will be divided, often producing intense disagreements. That potential for family friction has produced inheritance customs designed to assign property to a particular child and keep estates intact. For many centuries in parts of Western Europe, primogeniture granted the eldest son the family farm or estate to prevent fragmentation. In parts of Pakistan's mountainous Chitral district, families follow ultimogeniture called "chiro bash" or junior right, which leaves the family home entirely to the youngest son. Older children often leave home to seek their own fortunes knowing the youngest will inherit.
As parents age, siblings may face tough decisions about who will take care of them if they become infirm or frail. And then there's the matter of how the estate will be divided up when parents die. To say that disagreements crop up is perhaps an understatement. This potential for family friction has given birth to various customs. In the past, the eldest son often got it all.That's called primogeniture although it's no longer the way things typically play out today.
The youngest child becomes the heir apparent. As the oldest son in his family of two brothers and three sisters, Muhammad Ali always knew he would have to leave the family home in northwestern Pakistan when he came of age to seek his own fortune. That's because in the mountainous and remote Chitral district, families follow an unusual practice called "chiro bash'' or junior right in which the family home is left, in its entirety, to the youngest son.
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