One Dinar Left Over

About This Talk

Chapter 19 sets out two conditions of the ketubah that come due at a man's death. The first gives sons the right to inherit their own mother's ketubah and dowry before dividing the rest equally with their brothers, illustrated by an estate of two thousand zuz that leaves one son fourteen hundred and the other six hundred, and it applies only when the estate exceeds all the ketubot by at least a dinar, lest a Rabbinic provision entirely supersede the Torah's equal division. The Rambam fixes that valuation at the moment of death, refuses heirs who offer to raise the estate, rules that a promissory note for the excess does not reduce it, holds that the sons of a widow who swore before she died inherit her ketubah first by Scriptural inheritance even without the extra dinar, limits the provision to property still in the estate, and requires the sons to hold the ketubah document except where none is written. The second condition supports a man's daughters from his estate until betrothal or bagrut with necessities rather than standing and without an oath, cannot be cancelled by a deathbed order or an oral will, excludes the daughters of a yevamah, a sh'niyah, an arusah and a woman who was raped, and obliges a man who betroths a girl supported by her brothers to support her at once so that she is not put to shame. The chapter closes on the ample and the meager estate, feeding the daughters while the sons beg where only their support can be met, treating movables equally under the ordinance of the geonim, fixing the estate's status at death regardless of debts, placing the widow before the daughter, and ruling in the Rambam's own inference that a daughter's support precedes her brothers' Rabbinic claim to their mother's ketubah, before dividing an estate left only to daughters equally at once.