justitia et prudentia, kapitel 7 366 them the opportunity to decide for themselves on the distribution of their property in a future disposition of the estate. The parties to a dispute over wills can be divided into two groups: partly disputes between widows and children and partly disputes among siblings. A contributing factor to this pattern was almost certainly the fact that the legal system in the 17th century did not allow for wives to inherit their husbands. There were many occasions when widows were forced to gain whatever they could from the disposition of an estate. The proportion of female parties to cases of disputed wills is also greater than that of female parties to other cases heard in the courts of appeal. There were no occasions in the cases examined whereby the will was used to disinherit direct heirs entirely. To deny completely one’s own children the right to inherit was not accepted by the Svea Court of Appeal as, in the view of the court, this was contrary to all existing legal principles. On the other hand, the will was used as a tool to differentiate in the distribution of the estate in a manner that the legal system and statutes had not allowed for. Some direct heirs receivedmore and some less, depending on the conditions relevant to the specific case. Some testators wished to benefit one of the children above the others, for various reasons. An example of this type of re-distribution is the case of a child who had financial problems and needed help in getting back on his/her feet. The decision to favour one child above the others does not seem to have been influenced by questions of sex: girls were not favoured more than boys or vice versa because of their sex, rather other factors lay behind any preferential treatment. Neither is there any evidence that the will was used to exclude daughters from their inheritance, rather there was a tendency for the reverse to have been the case. The will could also be used as a legal instrument to even out the inheritance among children of different marriages in cases where the testator considered the legal rights of inheritance to give rise to an unfair distribution of the property. With regard to disputes between siblings, there is no difference in the legal issues raised in cases involving full siblings and those involving half-siblings or other sibling relations. The consistently repeated argument from the parties making the complaint is that they were aggrieved and unfairly treated on the division of the estate resulting from the provisions of the will. The will could also be used to ensure the rights of inheritance of illegitimate children. Illegitimate children had no rights of inheritance under
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