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Because of personal liberty. If you want all of your money to go to your kids, why can't you do that? Inheritance is as much about the person that died as it is the person/people receiving the inheritance.

OK, here's a person who owned a bunch of property, and they died. So now they don't own the property. Who should own it?

In America, the default assumption is not that the government owns something until proven otherwise.

given concepts like eminent domain and their historical use, I think the assumption with property actually /is/ that the government owns it until proven otherwise.

Eminent domain doesn't mean that the government owns it. It means that, if they have good reason, they can take it, and they have to pay you fair value for doing so. That's kind of the opposite of "the government owning it until proven otherwise".

Often adult children work in the business and they do feel they have earned their inheritance.