Women, money, and inheriting in the Victorian era

Is this set in England?

If so, this should help.

http://callynpierson.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/myth-busting-inheritance-law-in-the-regency-era/

Here's another good link

http://www.courtneymilan.com/devises.php

Bugger. Just realised I've given you links to the Regency era. I'll leave them up in case someone else needs them but give me two minutes.......

Amazingly enough, it's more difficult to find links about the property of single women in Victorian England than in Regency England!

But I did find this:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/DENNEY/2011-09/1315536815

The 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs should be useful to you

It might be pertinent that a law was passed in 1870, The Married Women's Property Law that allowed married women to keep their earnings and inherit personal property and money, so getting married might open up possibilities for her. You'd probably need to check the actual law though. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_Women%27s_Property_Act_1870 , yeah it's wiki but it should get you started )

I'm not so sure about the trusts though (pretty sure he wouldn't be able to sell any property that was hers for instance) I'll have a bit more of a dig ETA it's going to depend what sort of trust was set up

Assuming this is set in England—You probably ought to take the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 into account, as it would have just come into effect. It could be a plot bunny!

The act was not retroactive; thus, any woman who married before this act became legally effective could not recover property she had held before marriage (if she had any). This greatly limited the effect this act had on married women.

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According to your OP, she has already inherited property but is not married. So if she gets married after the act is in force, she keeps her property.

If she is not yet 21 a Trustee appointed by her father would control her inheritance until she turns 21. The same or a different Trustee would control her younger brother’s inheritance until he turns 21. This can be and often was separate from a guardian responsible for them. Frex, a father might appoint the mother the guardian and some lawyers or an uncle as the trustee. If the father thinks his eldest son is competent then it’s likely he would appoint him as Trustee for both his siblings. Is their mother still alive? If she is she may be the guardian. If she’s not then both your FMC and her younger brother may have separate inheritances from her.

If your FMC is 21, then she’s responsible for her own property while she is single. There would be NO financial advantage to marrying before the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 comes into effect (assuming she is aware of it). There might be a social advantage to marrying. It would be socially difficult for her to set up her own house away from her brother to live in at that age, unless she has an aunt or some other respectable female to set up a house with.

There was a Court of Chancery responsible for minors to which your FMC and/or her brother might appeal the wasting of their inheritance. But by 1870 it was over burdened and inefficient and soon to be done away with.

In your case if her father made his will before the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 was passed by Parliament, then he probably made it assuming her husband would end up owning every single thing she had, down to her monthly rags, unless there was some kind of marriage contract giving her rights to income from her property. So he may well have set up a trust that her husband cannot easily touch. It wouldn’t be all that easy for her brother to touch, I don’t think, if there are lawyers involved.

Your plot can go a lot of ways depending on the legal savvy of your FMC and how much help and influence she has access to to wrest her and her brother’s inheritance out of the control of her elder brother. It’d be plausible to me that he could spend it all and she not realize she could try to stop it. Or not have access to the sorts of people who could help her try to stop it. However, if she’s 21 or older I’d be more skeptical of the elder brother getting away with spending her money.

If she’s under 21 then marrying might be a way for her husband to get her property away from the brother. Especially if it happens before the Married Women’s Property Act 1870 comes into effect. But then all her property would belong to her husband unless there was some kind of trust that her father set up.


Added after I refreshed:

From Mirandashell’s first linked article

Since a gentleman could not work for a living, loss of his land and the necessity of going out to work would drop him from the peerage or the gentry down to the level of a tradesman and he would no longer be associated with by his previous friends.

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Loss of land would certainly drop someone from the gentry down to tradesman or lower status. But it would not deprive the elder brother of a Peerage. That’s an inherited title that is not linked to land. Landless Peers happened even in mid Victorian times. So if your feckless older brother gambles his entire estate away, he’s still a Viscount and so are his descendants (or his younger brother if he dies without sons).

That second link is quite useful!

And Sigh, I type too slow.

The only thing I would add to Ultragotha's answer is that if any part of the estate is entailed, which is the usual situation, older brother won't be able to gamble that away. He can, however, mortgage it in such a way that any income it produces goes to the mortgage holder, leaving them just as impoverished as if he had lost it.

Wills and trusts can be set up in a wide variety of ways.

And elder brother can't break the entail, if there is one, because he has no heir. Even if he had a son, he couldn't break the entail until his son was 21. And then only if the son agreed to break it.

I'm not sure about this, my knowledge is gleamed from reading many Regency novels, but shouldn't the heroine (if she is a peer) have a dowry or something? Or would that be the money put in a trust for her?

That's actually a pretty good resolution to the "penniless" idea. Dad set up a trust, all right, but put all of the heroine's money in a sizable dowry to ensure she would snag a high level husband and forever benefit from the inheritance. Since the dowry concept was so time honored, it would never occur to him it was necessary to put the same regulations on the money as the regular trust, so it wound up the ONLY money the brother had available to spend. The brother keeps his peerage and status . . . making the sting that much greater to the heroine.

Just a thought.

That sounds pretty good to me.

If the father did not make a proper trust for her and left everything to his eldest son then there is no inheritance for her to save. There is no "family" money. It all belongs to the eldest son and the best she can hope for is to find someone who will marry a penniless daughter of a Viscount. Or perhaps blackmail her brother into giving her something.

But her father could have left her a piece of property as a dowry and her brother is spending all the proceeds of the property and not investing anything in maintaining it so if she doesn't get it out of his hands soon she won't HAVE a useful dowry.

Another note is that among the wealthy there were often marriage settlements, which would agree things like jointure and the disposal of the wife's dowry - for example, to be divided between children, or for a daughter's dowry, etc. If the late viscount's second wife had a smaller dowry, this could explain why the younger siblings are so dependent on the half-brother, and worried about his spending habits.

Think of Sense and Sensibility where Mr. Dashwood gained a life interest in an estate that was ultimately entailed to his grandson, John Dashwood's son. John Dashwood already had a lot more money from his mother, while the second Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters - his half-sisters - had to live on the interest of the £10 000 of Mrs. Dashwood's dowry, which would then be split between the daughters. The Dashwood sisters ended up living in a small cottage because Mrs. John Dashwood was such a penny-pinching, greedy monster.

Maybe you can take a little inspiration from that? It may be much earlier, but I imagine they still used settlements and the like.

As the OP story is set in 1870, right when the Married Women's Property Act 1870 was enacted, the laws are, or will be very soon, different to the laws in effect during the Regency.