AHC/WI: Minimum Partitions/Heirs for Inheritance

Your challenge is to devise an inheritance system in which a minimum number of heirs is required for an inheritance to be legal. Specifically:
1. The minimum should be at least three, who should all be treated as an equal of the benefactor's son.
2. If there are less heirs available than the minimum number required, additional heirs shall be chosen, the process of which can vary, e.g. by serching the family tree, clan/church arbitration, or even given to charity. However, spouse(s), siblings, parents and *government should better not be eligible, as I want this kind of inheritance to work properly instead of being abused.
3. This method need not apply to the sovereign(if there is one), the poor nor the childless.
4. This method must be used in a country or at least a recognizable culture/religion (several million members if in modern times).
5. PoD can be anytime in the historical era, that is, no random appearance of a people using it since time immemorial.

My rational for it is for a certain society to prevent amassment of wealth through strategic marriages, entice wealthy people to procreate, and maybe, strengthening family bonds depending of implementation. But the result of what is presented could be very different from what I imagined, so please describe what such system does according to you?

* spending it on common good is okay.
 
It sounds somewhat similar to Gavelkind or the succession laws in Wales whereby the property was distributed as equally as possible among all the sons of the last holder. Of course that didn't have a minimum value, but what it did lead to was a lot of fraternal disputes, and overall the land becoming weaker and poorer as farms became highly divided and less efficient.
 
It sounds somewhat similar to Gavelkind or the succession laws in Wales whereby the property was distributed as equally as possible among all the sons of the last holder. Of course that didn't have a minimum value, but what it did lead to was a lot of fraternal disputes, and overall the land becoming weaker and poorer as farms became highly divided and less efficient.

Nevertheless it's similar to many modern inheritance laws so it just appeared in the wrong era. Also it discourages people from having more children, exactly what the hypothetical system here tries to prevent, and I specifically made sovereigns exempt from it for political unity reasons mentioned here.
 
Nevertheless it's similar to many modern inheritance laws so it just appeared in the wrong era.

Well, not really. Modern inheritance systems have moved to a point whereby, as families have gotten smaller and wealth is no longer directly related to land, it's become a lot easier to split up the wealth. You'll notice that most settlements these days see the old house sold off (everyone having moved out), or made available for the heir most needing of it, while the rest of it is a case of splitting up the furniture/antiques. But it's quite rare for the very wealthy or those who own a lot of land to actually give much to the younger children- usually they're given a trust fund to help support themselves and perhaps one of the minor townhouses a couple of generations back, but most of the wealth and land stays with the eldest son.

Also it discourages people from having more children, exactly what the hypothetical system here tries to prevent, and I specifically made sovereigns exempt from it for political unity reasons mentioned here.

It's a theoretical discouragement, but not a feasible one considering how primitive family planning was. In the modern period it would be, but as noted with so much wealth now in portable forms it's much less of an issue. You've also got the problem that if a form of inheritance is clearly 'not right' for the ruling classes then why is it 'right' for the farmers?

I think the biggest problem really is the old adage of que bono? Primogeniture works because it passes all the wealth on to the eldest child and so allows smooth transition as well as preserving the wealth and titles that have been built up- a big benefit for the family name as well as hopefully meaning that the rest of the family can be supported off the (hopefully) well-managed estates.

Gavelkind was a feasible system to implement because it at least seemed to be a fair concept- disputes over inheritances aside- though the issues associated with it caused it to lose out in the long term.

With your method, why would anyone want to be required to have a minimum number of heirs? Why would the current holder want to break up their property unnecessarily? Why would an only child want to lose two thirds of his patrimony to a 4th Cousin who's never had any involvement in the estate? Why should the poor orphans who don't have any skills in land management gain a third of a fertile and prosperous estate simply because the current owner has only two children? Why would people want to avoid making strategic marriage alliances? It just doesn't make any social or economic sense and would be quite quickly disliked by a very large number of the people who are required to actually keep it running.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Sole heirs also gets one the entertaining value of names like:

Sole heirs also gets one the entertaining value of quadruple-barrelled names like:

Admiral the Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, KCB, DSO, JP, DL, often referred to as Reginald Plunkett or Reginald Drax,or, famously, as Admiral Acronym...

Not to mention someone with the perfectly reasonable name of Augustus Henry Lane-Fox becoming Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers....

Add in titles (the 6th Earl of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh, formerly the Viscount Wigan-Pier, formerly Baron Red Bloody), and British history in the modern era is a maze of "that's really oh so similar a name but he's not quite the same person we think as that guy with the really similar last name but a different generation" tangents to explore...

Best,
 
Well, not really. Modern inheritance systems have moved to a point whereby, as families have gotten smaller and wealth is no longer directly related to land, it's become a lot easier to split up the wealth. You'll notice that most settlements these days see the old house sold off (everyone having moved out), or made available for the heir most needing of it, while the rest of it is a case of splitting up the furniture/antiques. But it's quite rare for the very wealthy or those who own a lot of land to actually give much to the younger children- usually they're given a trust fund to help support themselves and perhaps one of the minor townhouses a couple of generations back, but most of the wealth and land stays with the eldest son.



It's a theoretical discouragement, but not a feasible one considering how primitive family planning was. In the modern period it would be, but as noted with so much wealth now in portable forms it's much less of an issue. You've also got the problem that if a form of inheritance is clearly 'not right' for the ruling classes then why is it 'right' for the farmers?

I think the biggest problem really is the old adage of que bono? Primogeniture works because it passes all the wealth on to the eldest child and so allows smooth transition as well as preserving the wealth and titles that have been built up- a big benefit for the family name as well as hopefully meaning that the rest of the family can be supported off the (hopefully) well-managed estates.

Gavelkind was a feasible system to implement because it at least seemed to be a fair concept- disputes over inheritances aside- though the issues associated with it caused it to lose out in the long term.

With your method, why would anyone want to be required to have a minimum number of heirs? Why would the current holder want to break up their property unnecessarily? Why would an only child want to lose two thirds of his patrimony to a 4th Cousin who's never had any involvement in the estate? Why should the poor orphans who don't have any skills in land management gain a third of a fertile and prosperous estate simply because the current owner has only two children? Why would people want to avoid making strategic marriage alliances? It just doesn't make any social or economic sense and would be quite quickly disliked by a very large number of the people who are required to actually keep it running.

I don't see a problem with rulers having different inheritance laws than commoners, slap the diving right of kings, indivisible crown or some other fiat theories to make realm different from properties.

This is a case of "cui malo?" — it punishes people for having too few offsprings. Why should your property go to someone you don't know or taken for the greater good? Because you are too "unproductive", that's why!
 
This is a case of "cui malo?" — it punishes people for having too few offsprings. Why should your property go to someone you don't know or taken for the greater good? Because you are too "unproductive", that's why!

I don't think I've ever come across a culture which thinks like this in recorded history. Hell, it goes completely against the belief in the middle ages that chastity is a virtue and lust a vice, not the mention the practicality for the working poor that getting your wife pregnant all the time just means that after the first couple of children you're denying the farm and your lord and potentially productive worker. The idea that how many children you have is a measure of your productivity would just been seen as absurd.
 
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