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From: "norman lee" <>
Subject: Re: [OEL] Heir not mentioned in will
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:15:30 +0100
References: <000001c77a7d$8e490800$0201a8c0@useree29f53535><93EC899E92A38749B4B93AC4319D25B60A1C0830@Saffron.cfs.le.ac.uk>


Does the difference between a will and a testament have anything to do with
this? I seem to remember that a will demised land and a testament disposed
all the rest of the property. The fact that most wills also included the
testament (generally says "last will and testament of X") tends to muddy the
waters.

Audrey

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tompkins, M.L.L." <>
To: "Elizabeth Agar" <>; <>
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 11:11 AM
Subject: Re: [OEL] Heir not mentioned in will


>
> <<The reasons I can think of are - pre-deceased the parent, already
> married
> and received their share via marriage settlement (common amongst daughters
> whose unmarried sisters were beneficiaries), already set up in business
> financed by parent (includes a married son named as executor whose two
> younger single brothers received the bulk of the estate). The last of
> these
> could also have been marriage settlement, but must have been much larger
> than those of his married sisters.>>
>
> Other common reasons for the heir not being mentioned in the will were (i)
> that the land was entailed, so that it went to the person next entitled
> under the entail (and there was nothing the testator could do about it)
> and (ii) that it wasn't necessary to leave your land to your heir in a
> will - he got it automatically, by virtue of the very fact that he was
> your heir (that was the original definition of 'heir' - the person who got
> your land if you died without leaving it by will).
>
> Recently there has been a bit of a fashion in academic circles to study
> what they call 'inheritance strategies' - the different methods used by
> people to transmit their wealth to their children or other heirs. Some of
> these might contain statistics on the frequency of wills which did not
> mention the heir (or which mentioned him/her but didn't leave him anything
> substantial, and in particular didn't leave him any land - the main source
> of most people's wealth). Of course, the proportion doing this would have
> varied between social classes and occupations, and between different
> historical periods. I'm afraid I can't point you to any such studies for
> the 17th -19th centuries, or for the gentry and aristocracy, but one which
> analyses the inheritance strategies of 15th and 16th century peasants is
> Jane Whittle's 'The Development of Agrarian Capitalism' (Oxford, 2000), in
> chapter 3 (though she seems to be unaware of the fact that land not
> mentioned in the will would pass to the !
> heir automatically - she is puzzled by the high incidence of testators not
> leaving their land in their will).
>
> A google search against 'inheritance strategies' would probably produce
> more.
>
> And lastly, my own thesis contains a statistical analysis of the
> proportion of the 16th century population of Great Horwood in
> Buckinghamshire who did not leave their land in their will but just
> allowed the law of inheritance to pass it to their heir automatically. It
> was based on a comparison of the wills with the landownership information
> contained in the manor court rolls and other records, and revealed that at
> least a third of those who owned land and made wills didn't bother to
> mention the land but just allowed it to pass to the heir automatically. I
> can send you the section which contains this analysis if you'd be
> interested.
>
> Matt Tompkins
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Yvonne Purdy
> Sent: Monday, 9 April 2007 5:13 PM
> Subject: [OEL] Heir not mentioned in will
>
> Dear all,
>
> I've asked about this a good while back, but I could really do with seeing
> some statistics, or does anyone know of any study on the heir/ess and
> his/her lines not being mentioned in their father/mother's will?
>
> I've now come across this in two of my lines, and would like to know
> whether
> it is commonplace?
>
> Thank you for any help.
> Regards, Yvonne
>
>
>
>
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