Inheritance Rights Quotes
As this quotation demonstrates, capital punishment was approved in the Old Testament for criminals and hanging was a Biblically sanctioned method of execution.
At the time, in many states married women could not control their own inheritance, could not sign a contract, owned no part of a family business that a women might have founded and worked in her entire life, could not be an executor of a will—even if it were her husband’s.
In many countries, the king received all land and most property upon the death of a landowner.
There are many who wish for such a simple adoption procedure today.
In every society where there had been past unjust ownership of land, all efforts of land reform were faced with the problem of having to dispossess the current “owners” who themselves had not been guilty of the crimes of their ancestors in unjustly obtaining the land originally. In America land reform was unworkable in most cases and the solution was usually a large monetary payment as compensation for the land.
A fief was an estate of land and people. The man who had the title to the fief was obligated to raise troops from his estates and lead then at the command of the King. Women, under English law could not inherit a fief—it went to the oldest son. However, once the military element of fiefdom was eliminated, Johnson saw no reason why women should no longer inherit feifs and the titles that went with them.
Husbands like to take the credit for a wife’s virtues, but if there be any shortcomings the husband blames the woman’s family. Note that the woman is not perceived as capable of independent action other than that which is taught, controlled or mandated by wither a husband or father, brothers or other male relatives. This attitude tragically makes reform so very difficult in Arab cultures.
Primogeniture is the system where property is inherited from the father to the first born son. At the time women could not own property unless they were widows. It is the basis of most aristocracies. See {627010} for an American view of primogeniture that was stated a little earlier.
