Within the legal field, heritage is the legal relationship between two or more individuals, who have an economic or property interest. When speaking of real people, the heritage becomes the asset, movable or immovable, which belongs to a subject or a group of them, such as the inheritance of a family, the historical and cultural heritage of a region, among others; this is characterized because almost anyone can access it. When an asset is subject to constant legal regulation, it is often referred to as the object, the one that determines the legal relationship between people.
The term has its origin in the Latin word "patrimonium", which means "what is received through the paternal line. Originally, this was the name given to the series of assets owned by a gens or family, which were inherited, from generation to generation, by the patriarchs of the family clan; the duty of the individual who now had power over property was to preserve and increase it. This concept was developed in the earliest Roman law and was developed and expanded over time. In the year 1873, the authors Charles Aubry and Charles-Frédéric Rau took great care in drawing up the patrimony guidelines for modern law, establishing that not everything can be considered patrimony, only that which can be valued monetarily.
Equity in the same way, can be classified as assets, the assets that are already owned and those that are on the way to be possessed, in addition to the liabilities, also called net worth, which are those debt or contributions that are made, with the purpose of owning certain assets.