Daily Talk
A man dies without saying what dowry his daughter should receive, and the court investigates his friends, his business and the way he lived to discover what he would have wanted to give her. The same man, had he ordered on his deathbed that no dowry be given, would simply be obeyed. And a daughter who never asked for her portion loses it in one house and keeps it in another. What kind of claim is built entirely out of a father's presumed wishes?
What Her Father Would Have Wanted
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About This Talk
Chapter 20 sets out the parnasah, the dowry the Sages decreed a father give his daughter, fixing its floor at the wardrobe of a poor man's wife and its measure for a wealthy man at his own standard, and requiring a groom who takes a daughter with nothing to clothe her while she is still in her father's house rather than promising to do so later. After the father's death the court estimates what he would have wanted from his friends and acquaintances, his business, his standard of living and any daughter he already married off, and only failing that gives a tenth of the estate, the first daughter to marry taking a tenth, the second a tenth of the remainder, and daughters marrying together having their tenths pooled and divided equally. Because the dowry is not a provision of the ketubah it is collected only from land, a father's deathbed instruction to give none is heeded, and the daughter stands as a creditor of her brothers who collects intermediate land without an oath, inferior land with an oath from their sons, and land from purchasers, while among daughters alone there is no dowry at all, a younger sister whose brother died after the older sister took her tenth receives no tenth and simply divides the estate, and a widow's support takes precedence so that a married daughter collects nothing and her husband inherits nothing. The chapter closes on silence, allowing an orphan married as a minor to collect later because a minor cannot object, ruling that an adult who marries without demanding her dowry forfeits it unless she protested, protecting a bogeret whose brothers are still supporting her because she can say she did not ask while they were feeding her and she has not yet married, and deciding when a daughter may redirect money her father designated for land.