We’ve learned that sons are first in line to inherit an estate, but maintenance for a widow and daughters is taken out of their inheritance. In the absence of sons, daughters inherit. A mishnah on the first side of today’s daf considers how the marriages of those children, both sons and daughters, factor into the inheritance they receive:
If a person died and left adult and minor sons, the adults are not provided for by using funds of the minors, and the minors are not sustained by using funds of the adults. Rather, they receive a share of the inheritance equally.
If the adults married, the minors marry. But if the minors say: We are marrying in the same manner that you adults married during our father’s lifetime, the court does not listen to them. Rather, whatever their father gave the adults in his lifetime he gave them.
Between sons, the inheritance is divided as it normally would be, even if some sons are grown and self-supporting while others are still minors. If the older brothers were married during their father’s lifetime and their father paid for a lavish wedding, the younger, unmarried sons who later wish to marry after their father’s death cannot demand funds from their older brothers’ inheritance to throw equally lavish weddings. Alas, they must marry using the portion of the estate that has been left them.
In the absence of sons, daughters inherit. The mishnah’s rules here are analogous to what we learned for sons: The inheritance is split equally, and if some daughters married lavishly while the father was alive, the other daughters cannot demand a portion of their married sisters’ inheritance to put toward an equivalent wedding.
The Gemara brings the following halakhic puzzle which is answered through the mishnah on today’s daf:
Avuh bar Geneiva sent a question to Rava: Our teacher, instruct us: If a woman borrowed and consumed, and she stood and married, is the husband a purchaser or an heir?
This question is so pithy it reads a bit like a riddle. Here is what it means: A woman borrowed money without a formal document. She used up the money and then she got married. Is her new husband required to pay the money back?
A woman’s property is brought into the marriage in a complicated way. Her husband has a kind of ownership over her property, but it’s not full ownership. A case in which she owed a debt before the marriage took place tests the limits of that ownership. If her husband’s acquisition of her property is akin to receiving an inheritance, then he acquires not only her assets but also her debts. However, if his ownership is more akin to that of a purchaser, then he is not on the hook for the wife’s previous loan. Although the question does not directly deal with inheritance, the models of purchaser and inheritor inform the halakhic thinking.
The question of the rights and obligations of a husband in receiving property from his new wife continues to occupy the rabbis for much of today’s daf. As we read further, we discover that he is neither exactly like an inheritor nor exactly like a purchaser, though those remain useful categories for the rabbis to think with. For example, we learn that if a daughter inherits part of her late father’s estate, then her husband is required to continue to pay for shelter and food for his mother-in-law. In this way, he takes on the same role as a biological son who inherits from his father and has these responsibilities. However, in the case of a woman who retained ownership over her property, but as part of the wedding agreement the husband benefits from the profits of the land (usufruct property), during her lifetime she can technically sell the property, but when she dies her husband inherits it from her. Anyone who bought it from her will have to return it to the husband, because it’s as if he had a lien on it all this time. In this sense, he is more like a purchaser.
Rav Ashi summarizes where we have landed:
The sages equated the husband with an heir, and the sages equated him with a purchaser.
With respect to his wife’s property, a husband is neither exactly a purchaser nor an inheritor. Rather, we have to evaluate the details of each individual situation and decide on a case-by-case basis. In a sense this practical answer, that eschews hard and fast categories, reflects the complication of marriage. The husband and wife enter into a relationship that is both financial and familial and will constantly have to juggle the two aspects of their estate. It also speaks to the role of the rabbis and the Talmud. While the Talmud is full of legal arguments and ideas, it ultimately is a guide for the next generation of decisors. Because no matter how large the law book, we will always need judges to determine the outcome in unforeseen situations.
Read all of Bava Batra 139 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on November 11, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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