Inheritance

noun

1. The passing of title to an estate upon death.
2. That which a person is entitled to inherit, by law or testament.
3. The act or mechanism of inheriting; the state of having inherited

   "The Indo-European languages share various similarities as a result of their inheritance from a common ancestor."

4. (genetic algorithms) The biological attributes passed hereditarily from ancestors to their offspring.
5. The mechanism whereby parts of a superclass are available to instances of its subclass.