Freedom of testamentary disposition
idea · 2 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
freedom of testamentary disposition · testamentary freedom · Wills · right of making Wills · right to bequeath · testamentary rights
spoken of as
1 expressionRight to bequeath“testamentary freedom”1 mention
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John (English)
no such right had been admitted.
in the texts
Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England
The English legal principle allowing free disposition of property by will, contrasted with the French system of compulsory equal division among heirs.
The systematic and equal division of a deceased person’s property among his family thoroughly corresponds with French ideas of justice, and prohibits that formation of large hereditary estates which has long been a marked feature of English social life.
In truth, the equal division of a man’s property among his descendants or his nearest relatives at his death, though almost essential to the maintenance of small estates, is thoroughly opposed to that absolute freedom of testamentary disposition to which Englishmen have so long been accustomed that they have come to look upon it as a kind of natural right.
Freedom of testamentary disposition is a right or a privilege which few Englishmen desire to surrender.
Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John
The evolving legal recognition of a subject's power to direct the disposition of personal property after death, and the limits placed on royal and ecclesiastical interference with it.
no such right had been admitted.
Incidentally, it throws light on the right of bequeathing property.
John’s Charter makes no admission of any right of the church in the “proving” of Wills;