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instituted heirs, when (as so often was the case) they were
requested to transfer the whole or nearly the whole of an
inheritance, declined to accept for what was no benefit, or at
most a very slight bcncfit, to themselves, and this caused
a failure of tlie trusts, afterwards, in the time of thc Emperor
Vespasian, and during the consulate of Pegasus and Pugio,
the senate decreed that an heir who was requested to transfer
the inhcritance sliould have the same right to retatn a fourth
thereof as the lex Falcidia gives to an heir chai^ed with the
payment of legacies, and gave a similar right of retaining the
fourth of any specific thing left in trust. After the passing
of this senatusconsult the heir, wherever it canie into opera-
tion, was sole administrator, and the transferee of the residue
was in the position of a partiary legatee, that is, of a legatee
of a certain specified portion of the estate under the kind of
bequest called participation, so that the stipulations which
had bccn usual between an heir and a partiary legatcc were
now entercd into by the heir and transfcree, in order to secure
a rateable division of the gains and losses arising out of the
inheritance. Accordingly, after this, if no more than three- 6
fourths of the inheritance was in trust to be transferred, then
the SC. Trebellianum govemed thc transfer, and both were
liablc to be sued for thc debts of the inheritance in rateable
portions, the heir by civil law, the transferee, as quasi-heir,
by that enactment. But if more than thrce-fourths, or even
the whole was left in trust to be transferred, the SC. Pegasi-
anum came into operatioUj and when once the heir had
accepted, of course voluntarily, he was the sole administrator
whcther he retained one-fourth or declined to retain it; but
if he did, he entered into stipuiations with the transferee
similar to those usual betwcen the heir and a partiary legatce,
while if hc did not, but transferred thc whole inheritance,
he covenanted with him as quasi-purchaser. If an instituted
heir refuse to accept an inheritance from a suspicion that
the liabilities exceed the assets, it is providcd by the SC.
