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After the Revolution: “Reform” of the Law of Inheritance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

John V. Orth
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Extract

The American victory in the Revolutionary War was followed by a spate of lawmaking, the silence that succeeded the clash of arms being promptly shattered by a legislative hubbub. One North Carolina judge in 1787 likened the colonists' legal situation after the Revolution to that of “a set of people shipwrecked and cast on a marooned island.” Like so many Robinson Crusoes, they were “without laws, without magistrates, without government, or any legal authority.” A new political order was urgently required, so constitutions were drafted and adopted in short order. Civil laws were needed as well, and rules of decision for the new state courts. By and large, English common law was maintained, a familiar system with which most people were satisfied and one, moreover, that had gained added luster from revolutionary arguments based on defense of the rights of “freeborn Englishmen.”

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 33 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1992

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References

1. Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N.C. 5, 6 (1787).

2. Jefferson, T., Notes on the State of Virginia 137 (1787; Peden, W. ed. 1954).Google Scholar

3. PA. CONST, of 1776, § 37. Compare N.C. CONST, of 1776, § 43.

4. S.C. CONST, of 1790, art. 10, § 5.

5. Of the seven canons of inheritance, the first three operated together to produce the result in favor of the first-born male.

I. Inheritances shall lineally descend to the issue of the person last actually seized, in infinitum; but shall never lineally ascend.

II. The male issue shall be admitted before the female.

III. Where there are two or more males in equal degree, the eldest only shall inherit; but the females all together.

See 2 Blackstone, W., Commentaries on the Laws of England 208, 212, 213 (1765-69)Google Scholar.

Surviving spouses were not heirs at common law. Widows were entitled to dower (a life estate in one-third of the lands of which their husbands were seized during marriage). If live issue was born to the marriage, widowers were entitled to curtesy (a life estate in all lands of which their wives were seized during marriage). See 2 Blackstone, supra note 5, at 129, 126.

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11. 2 Tocqueville, supra note 9, at 370 (App. G).

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15. Act of 1785, ch. 60, § 2, reprinted in 12 Laws of Virginia 146 (Hening, W. W. ed. 1823).Google Scholar

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27. Since B had as yet no son, the remainder in tail was said to be contingent (i.e., contingent on the birth of a son), and this necessitated a further technicality: a trust “to preserve the contingent remainder.” Judicial acceptance in the seventeenth century of trusts to preserve contingent remainders was what clinched the effectiveness of strict settlements.

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33. Act of 1749, ch. 4, § 2, reprinted in 23 State Records of North Carolina 316 (Clark, W. ed. 1904).Google Scholar

34. Act of 1784, ch. 22, § 5, reprinted in 24 State Records of North Carolina, supra note 17 at 574.

35. Id. (Codified at N.C. Gen. Stat. § 41-1).

36. 2 Tocqueville, supra note 9, at 369 (App. G).

37. Id. at 370.

38. 2 Blackstone, supra note 5, at 361.

39. Roy v. Garnett, 2 Wash. 9 (1794) (concerning the state of a title in 1780). The case involved a large estate and was elaborately argued; it is possible that the devise in question was well known to the legal community a decade before the litigation and illustrated the problems with the 1776 Act. See 2 Minor, J. B., Institutes of Common and Statute law 86 (2d ed. 1876).Google Scholar

40. Act of 1785, ch. 62, reprinted in 12 Laws of Virginia, supra note 15, at 156–57 [codified at Va. Stat. § 55-12 (1986)].

41. See Orth, , Does the Fee Tail Exist in North Carolina? 23 Wake Forest L. Rev. 761-95 (1988).Google Scholar

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43. Burke, E., Letters on a Regicide Peace, in 5 The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke 208 (1795–1797; 1854).Google Scholar