summary. the open window Researchers agree on the fundamental importance of immovable property in pre-industrial times. Inwhat follows, situations in which various stakeholders in Stockholm lay claim on immovable property are addressed. According to the city’s own statutes, lineal heirs of a deceased woman or man had the right to redeem property that the deceased donated earlier to a religious institution or a guild. But lineal heirs competed for this right with the deceased’s spouse. In Stockholm, the surviving spouse always won. The justifications that existed were that the surviving spouse had been married to the deceased and should therefore “inherit”. The surviving spouse took precedence over lineal offspring. Sometimes the surviving spouse was a biological parent of the couple’s offspring, sometimes the survivor was a stepparent to the children of the deceased. In any case, lawmakers seemed to have thought that property would, in due course, come to the deceased’s children after the death of the surviving spouse. When children became of legal age, they had, according to Swedish town law, succession priority to buy the property that had previously belonged to one of their parents, but which belonged to another relative for a certain period. But the city of Stockholm had decided that the surviving spouse of the deceased also had succession priority. Even in cases where lineal heirs competed for the property, the surviving spouse, who was sometimes their parent, sometimes a stepparent, had precedence. The same reasoning, that the surviving spouse had been a part of the marriage and therefore should “inherit” the property, also was used as justification. In parity to the inheritance benefits bestowed to surviving spouses, the city council had decided, prior to the period studied, that those who inherited real estate in the city but who had no intention of living there and engage in a burgher occupation could not keep it. Instead the property would be sold to a Stockholm burgher. The surviving spouse held purchase priority rights in such cases. Relatives living outside the city 299 The struggle over immovable property
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