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The Common Room / Re: The long and the short of it
« on: Monday 18 January 21 15:21 GMT (UK) »
I've got a digital copy of a will that's 180 pages in length.
It's from ScotlandsPeople, so there are two pages per .jpg, which means I only had to download 90 individual .jpgs. (The ScotlandsPeople system isn't able to provide .pdfs of long wills.)
In my experience, the longer wills from Scotland are mostly filled with descriptions of boundaries for plots of land. The more land a person owned, the longer the will.
I'm not an expert, but I think the whole point of wills (and inheritance law) was to ensure that property, etc., stayed in the family.
A lot of men who owned rental properties (including working farms) left their various holdings to one or more sons, with provisions that their widow should be provided for in specific ways (often stating that the money will stop if she remarries). It was similar for daughters and other female legatees, with clauses that kept their funding separate from payment of taxes or debt, etc. The intention seems to have been for the man's various income streams to continue to provide for his family after his death. But that's in the case of a man having more than one small farm to pass on to his eldest son.
I've seen clauses to the effect that, even though the heir or legatee is a woman, such-and-such rules shouldn't apply to this money. I haven't looked into it, so I don't know what that was all about.
But, yeah, most of it is overflowing with verbiage that makes me think they got paid by the word.
Nowadays -- in Canada, at least -- you can write whatever you want in your will, but it can be contested and overturned after your death, in favour of adult offspring or other relatives you specifically stated would not receive anything from your estate.
Regards,
Josephine
It's from ScotlandsPeople, so there are two pages per .jpg, which means I only had to download 90 individual .jpgs. (The ScotlandsPeople system isn't able to provide .pdfs of long wills.)
In my experience, the longer wills from Scotland are mostly filled with descriptions of boundaries for plots of land. The more land a person owned, the longer the will.
I'm not an expert, but I think the whole point of wills (and inheritance law) was to ensure that property, etc., stayed in the family.
A lot of men who owned rental properties (including working farms) left their various holdings to one or more sons, with provisions that their widow should be provided for in specific ways (often stating that the money will stop if she remarries). It was similar for daughters and other female legatees, with clauses that kept their funding separate from payment of taxes or debt, etc. The intention seems to have been for the man's various income streams to continue to provide for his family after his death. But that's in the case of a man having more than one small farm to pass on to his eldest son.
I've seen clauses to the effect that, even though the heir or legatee is a woman, such-and-such rules shouldn't apply to this money. I haven't looked into it, so I don't know what that was all about.
But, yeah, most of it is overflowing with verbiage that makes me think they got paid by the word.
Nowadays -- in Canada, at least -- you can write whatever you want in your will, but it can be contested and overturned after your death, in favour of adult offspring or other relatives you specifically stated would not receive anything from your estate.
Regards,
Josephine
