Ultimogeniture serves the circumstances where the youngest is "keeping the hearth", taking care of the parents and continuing at home, whereas elder children have had time to succeed "out in the world" and provide for theselves. Remembering the usual age at death, the system has been relatively impractical during past centuries. Ultimogeniture has been more suitable to rulers who have ruled already for several decades and are leaving children who are more or less all adults.

In Mediaeval England, the principle of patrilineal ultimogeniture (i.e. inheritance by the youngest surviving male child) was known as Borough-English. In 1327, a court case found it to be the tradition in the borough of Nottingham, whereas in areas influenced by Anglo-Norman culture, primogeniture was prevalent. The tradition was also found across many rural areas of England where lands were held in tenure by socage. It also occurred at copyhold manors in Surrey, Middlesex, Suffolk and Sussex.

In Kyushu and some other areas of Japan, property was traditionally by a modified version of ultimogeniture known as masshi souzoku. An estate was distributed equally among all sons, except that the youngest son received a double share as a reward for caring for their elderly parents in their last years. This tradition was prohibited by the Meiji legal code in the late nineteenth century.

Ultimogeniture seems also to have been practised in the Ancient Near East. In early Greek myths, kingship was conferred by marriage to a tribal nymph, who was selected by ultimogeniture or success in a race. Some scholars have noted that many Biblical characters are described as youngest sons or daughters and have inferred a prehistoric ultimogeniture tradition in the Holy Land.

Ultimogeniture was also traditional in Mongolia, where Genghis Khan passed the heart of the Mongol Empire to his fourth son, Tolui, and in areas of Myanmar and China, where it is traditional among by the Rawang and T'ring people for older sons to move away on reaching maturity and for only the youngest son to remain and inherit.

Disadvantages of ultimogeniture include the likelihood of children inheriting property which they are unable to control, and the prospect of elder siblings deprived of property potentially using their experience to unfairly wrest control of it.

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