Abstract: This article is aimed at determination of the factors and circumstances, which in different historical periods most significantly impacted the formation of the norms of inheritance that regulate inheritance of a business, and currently contribute to the formation of legal constructs of the inheritance fund. The author believes that such reasons are of both, sociocultural and political nature. Widening the circle of heirs from immediate family through paternal lineage to the possibility of leaving to any person, as well as drawing up a will upon the condition of creation an inheritance fund, the mission of which could be only philanthropic, and reflect the development of legal thought and freedom of a testator the correspond to the relevant needs of the society. The main conclusion consists in tracing the causal link between the relevant needs of civil circulation and the arising need of providing its participants with the efficient tools for hereditary succession a business in different periods of development of national legislation. The importance of providing extensive tools for inheritance planning is justified by the complexity of modern business structures and objects that can be a part of them.  Rapidly changing economic and social conditions of modern world dictate the responsibility of a legislator to render the subject of law flexible and thought-out tools for inheritance planning. Establishment of the institution of inheritance fund, as a result of the conducted reform of inheritance, became a naturally occurring stage in improvement of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.