Reply to Yes! Downton Abbey Part II coming up in 5 minutes!

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Yes! Downton Abbey Part II coming up in 5 minutes!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]omg. What is this show? It has a huge following. I'm going to check it out...brb. and thanks![/quote]

It's available from the pbs website but Netflix has the longer version available streaming.  Apparently they cut out 2 hours from the first season when bringing the show over to the US... thought we would't be interested in all those details about the "entail".[/quote]

Well here you go any way, from a lawyer in Britain: [b]First off, what’s an entail?[/b]
It is a limitation on the current tenant’s (in our case, the 6th Earl of Grantham) ownership interest in the estate. If he owned Downton Abbey outright, he would have a fee simple. Instead, he has a fee tail, which gives him a life interest so he can’t be evicted in his lifetime, but not the right to say who gets Downton Abbey after he dies.
[b]Okay, so how would an entail work?[/b]
The normal entail would be to “the 6th earl and heirs of his body” (meaning his legitimate biological children) or “and heirs male of his body” or “and heirs male of his body to be begotten on Cora.” When the 6th earl had no sons, the second and third of those would terminate, allowing the 6th earl to dispose of the money by will. The first would allow a daughter to inherit, but I’m not sure if it would pass to Mary or to the three daughters jointly or in shares…
If Mary, the eldest daughter, marries Matthew, the third cousin who has a "job" and knows what a "weekend" is, does that solve the problem?
Mary marrying Matthew would "fix" things because their eldest son would inherit the earldom and the money, and would be a descendant of the American nabob, so everybody gets what they wanted.  It matters that it's Mary rather than Sybil or Edith if, and only if, there is a settlement or entail to heirs, not limited to heirs male, and only if that has the effect of passing the money to the eldest daughter rather than to daughters jointly.  If Mary inherits by the 6th earl's will after the settlement or entail fails, then he could equally make Sybil or Edith his heiress.

[b]Why can't Matthew relinquish all rights to the title and estate and thus agree with Robert to break the entail?[/b]
Matthew is the heir presumptive, not the heir apparent.  Bluntly, he could be superseded as the heir to the earldom if Robert has a legitimate male heir.  Matthew's right to inherit the title and the estate are conditional, so he does not have the legal right to break the entail.  Only an heir apparent would have that right.  Only an eldest son meets the conditions of an heir apparent: direct descendant of the current title holder, male, and can't be superseded by another.

[b]Which is a bit of a catch-22, isn't it?  If they had a male heir of Cora's American family as well as of the first earl then the money and the estate both go to the rightful person, and they don't need to break the entail.  Without a son, Cora's money goes, with the title, to this fellow no one knows and who doesn't seem to want it.  But because the earl still might have a son, Matthew can't help Robert break the entail.[/b]
Welcome to property law, where rules established in the 13th century are only now passing slowly out of favor...

[b]Okay, so assume they go to court to break the entail.  Do they have an argument?[/b] 
Their best argument is that Cora's father was inadequately briefed by his lawyer and thus got bamboozled by the 5th earl.  But unless they can show something fishy was going on, it's unlikely that any English court would believe that an American nabob couldn't afford the best lawyers to protect his interests.

[b]S.O.L., hunh?[/b]
'Fraid so.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics