# Most distant kinship for inheritance?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-distant-kinship-for-inheritance/544455>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [June 25, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-distant-kinship-for-inheritance/544455 "2010-06-25T06:06:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-distant-kinship-for-inheritance/544455/1 "2010-06-25T06:06:33Z")

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While browsing another thread I was reminded of an amazing inheritance fact I wanted to share. It’s definitely mundane and pointless enough to post here. 😃

If all your children, siblings and 1st cousins predecease you, would your estate go to a 2nd cousin? (I hope so; I’ve a wealthy 2nd cousin whom I’ve not seen for 40 years!) How about 3rd cousins? Few people even know who they are. 4th cousins? Absurd, right?

Yet a very large estate once passed to an _ **18th cousin** _ !

> [@Ukraine and Netherlands, two odd countries](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ukraine-and-netherlands-two-odd-countries/544387/16):
>
> Luxembourg … gained a separate monarch when the last Dutch king, Willem III, died in 1890.

The event **Polycarp** refers to involves a genealogical inheritance that almost staggers my imagination. Netherlands then followed the semi-Salic inheritance rule, so Willem III’s daughter Wilhelmina was allowed to inherit the Dutch crown in 1890 only because the (legitimate) Y-chromosome of the dynasty’s founder _had gone **completely** extinct_.

Luxemburg also followed the semi-Salic inheritance rule, but it was an old heirloom of the Nassau family that predated their Kingship in Netherlands by many centuries. Actually, the entire House of Nassau was almost extinct … but not quite!

From Queen Wilhelmina, the patrilineal line was followed back 19 generations to Heinrich the Rich (died 1251) before finding a non-extinct line, then forward 19 generations to Wilhelmina’s 18th cousin, Adolf, who became the Grand Duke of Luxemburg. (Wilhelmina and Adolf were much closer relatives than this, of course, but 18th cousins using the patrilineal connection that was the only connection relevant for the inheritance.)

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