Meaning & use
disinherit
Last updated
Meaning
verbtransitivelegal
To arrange, usually in a will, that a person who would normally receive your property will receive nothing from it.
Grammar: Takes a person as the object: disinherit a son.
Patterns
- disinherit someone
- disinherit someone for something
- be disinherited by someone
The wealthy farmer threatened to disinherit his son if he sold the land.
She was disinherited after marrying against her family's wishes.
Few parents actually disinherit their children, even after a quarrel.
Word forms
| third person singular | disinherits |
|---|---|
| past tense | disinherited |
| past participle | disinherited |
| -ing form | disinheriting |
Common combinations
- threaten to disinherit
- He threatened to disinherit any heir who left the firm.
- disinherit a child
- Some countries do not allow you to disinherit a child completely.
- be disinherited
- The prince was disinherited for his scandalous behavior.
- cut off and disinherit
- Her uncle cut her off and disinherited her.
- disinherit an heir
- The will disinherited the eldest heir.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cut out
- Cut out is informal and can mean excluding someone from a will, but also from many other things.
- disown
- Disown means to reject a person as your relative, which can happen without any will or property involved.
- exclude
- Exclude is general and does not point to inheritance the way disinherit does.
- write out
- Write out of a will is a looser expression for removing a name from a will.
Opposites
Word family
- disinheritance noun
- the act of depriving someone of an inheritance
- inherit verb
- to receive property or traits from someone who has died or from parents
- inheritance noun
- money or property received after someone's death
- heir noun
- a person entitled to inherit
Commonly confused: disinherit or disown?
disinherit vs disown
Disown means to refuse to acknowledge someone as family, while disinherit is specifically about removing a right to inherit property.
Practice
After the argument, the old man changed his will to ____ his nephew.
Choose one answer.
Changing a will to leave someone out of it is to disinherit them. Distrust and disappoint describe feelings, not legal arrangements.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “disinherit”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.