Examination of the data culled from the registries of repudiation of inheritance kept by the Florentine Signoria has already told us a great deal about repudiation in practice. What the registry entries in fact reported was that a legal action had been undertaken before witnesses and a notary acting as a judge to repudiate an estate. These acts of repudiation were written down in clean formal copies for the party or parties and entered in abbreviated form in the notary's book (imbreviatura). In essence, these acts stated that the heir knew he was heir to a named deceased and considered the share of the hereditas that fell to him to be more harmful than profitable (inutilem and damnosam versus lucrosam), in consequence of which he repudiated and abstained. In all, a fairly neat and simple procedure.

Even if the registries were consistently and thoroughly informative, it would still be necessary to pursue acts of repudiation of inheritance in the notarial sources in order to understand other dimensions of the family dynamic behind these acts. Parties, having found a notary to record a repudiation, might also undertake other acts at the same time. Notaries also could elicit information that was not elicited by those keeping the registers (as regarding intestacy or testacy). There is, in short, no substitute for looking at these notarial acts. The results of this effort are reported here, beginning with data gathered into Table II.