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Re: [Query] Lolita's homelessness and inheritance
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Dear List
Using 'Dolores' to defeat spam filters...
As regards Jansy's questions on inheritance, a simplified answer is that things are indeed different in America from countries with a continental European derived system such as, say, Brazil, but you have to remember that the laws of the individual US states, at least in the 1940s, when Charlotte dies, varied considerably. The whole subject is also bedevilled by the intricacies of the English law of succession as it was applied (by no means uniformly) in the colonial territories of North America and, of course, as modified thereafter.
A lot would depend on whether Charlotte died having made a will. I can't recall any mention of that in the novel.
At the time of Charlotte's death, some US states still retained the old English law right of curtesy (abolished in England in 1925) under which a husband was entitled to a life interest in all of his deceased wife's land, provided that there was issue of the Marriage. That overrode any provision to the contrary in the deceased's will.
Humbert intimated to the Farlows that Dolores was actually his daughter - and then had John Farlow (not actually a lawyer) administer Charlotte's estate. I note that the house was rented after Charlotte's death, so if Ramsdale was in a state with rights of curtesy, the rent would have belonged to Humbert, not Dolores, irrespective of what was in Charlotte's will (assuming she actually made one).
The ultimate sales proceeds of the house would have belonged to whoever inherited Charlotte's estate (see below) but only after Humbert's death - until then, they would have been invested and Humbert would have been entitled to the income.
Would Dolores have been automatically entitled to a share of Charlotte's estate? If Charlotte died without having made a valid will, the answer would have been yes, under the appropriate statute dealing with intestate succession. But that would have been subject to any prior rights that Humbert would have had as surviving spouse, whether under the common law right of curtesy or under the relevant statute dealing with surviving spouses' rights in intestate succession.
What if Charlotte had made a will leaving everything to Humbert? The kind of forced heirship rules of succession in continental European legal systems which prevent a parent from disinheriting a child was originally unknown in English-type jurisdictions. However, statute law has intervened. Atkinson's Law of Wills, 2nd Edition (West Publishing Co, St. Paul Minn, 1953) says at page 141:
"By virtue of statutory provisions in almost every state, a child omitted from his parent's will may, under some circumstances, take his intestate share of the parent's estate."
In other words, the child may be able to overturn the will to the extent that it fails to make proper provision, by having the law of intestate succession apply in place of the will. To do that, Dolores would have needed some knowledge and some legal assistance.
But isn't this really beside the point? I don't think it matters what financial resources Dolores has available to her. Humbert's coerces Dolores into submission by threatening her with being incarcerated for her own misdeeds if she seeks help.
"So I go to jail. Okay. I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become a ward of the Department of Public Welfare - which I am afraid sounds a little bleak. A nice grim matron of the Miss Phalen type, but more rigid and not a drinking woman, will take away your lipstick and fancy clothes. ..... I don't know if you have heard of the laws relating to dependent, neglected, incorrigible and delinquent children...." and so on.
And even when she writes to Humbert in 1952, Dolores is, I think, only 17 and would either still have felt unsure about her position with the authorities or possibly have assumed that, as Charlotte's widower, Humbert would have had de facto control of her estate, whatever the legal position might turn out to be.
Barrie Akin
> On 17 Oct 2015, at 22:43, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@ATT.NET> wrote:
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> Your excellent and interesting question, though not being a lawyer I can't answer, raises another that I'm not sure I had ever considered before, which is, was Dolores actually Mr Hayes's (too spell him at his most likely actual name) daughter? Mrs H. says their daughter was engendered during their vacation (or was it honeymoon?) in Mexico (cf Hazel's origins in Nice), which would explain the name she was given, but is she telling the truth? Also, wasn't Mr. Hayes an insurance man? Or does your question merely plant that idea in my head? Of course, what I'm wondering is if her father was actually Quilty.
>
> And speaking of her given name, how did she come to be called Lolita (which, granted, is a diminutive of a diminutive for Dolores)? And speaking of diminutives, was Lolita was average height? short? tall? can't recall
>
> Carolyn
>
>
> On Oct 17, 2015, at 1:38 AM, Jansy Mello wrote:
>
> When a child’s parents die he/she necessarily inherits a percentage of the patrimony in my country: no lawful offspring can be deprived of a share in an inheritance when there is something material to inherit.
> Are matters different in America? Following the progression of Lolita’s travels away from her home and HH’s menaces that she’ll be left under state care if she divulges the violence she is suffering in his hands we find her being totally dependent on her stepfather who became the sole inheritor of house, furniture, pensions, even of her father’s ashes. When she writes him to ask for money, HH separates a generous sum to offer her as a gift as if, after the death of her mother, she had stopped to have any unalienable right to personal objects and history. Didn’t Charlotte Haze get a pension or an insurance after her husband died? (She was mainly a housekeeper, or not?). I cannot remember references to death taxes, inventories, documentation, whatever*. Her destiny is quite similar to V.Nabokov’s when forced to leave Russia.
>
> I lack the necessary legal vocabulary to better direct my questions. Her “homelessness” was not only a consequence of HH’s perverse actions but it also resulted from a specific kind of social organization?
> …………………………………
> *Humbert mentions letter-exchanges with a lawyer in Ramsdale: were these sufficient to deal with all the paperwork required in her situation?
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Using 'Dolores' to defeat spam filters...
As regards Jansy's questions on inheritance, a simplified answer is that things are indeed different in America from countries with a continental European derived system such as, say, Brazil, but you have to remember that the laws of the individual US states, at least in the 1940s, when Charlotte dies, varied considerably. The whole subject is also bedevilled by the intricacies of the English law of succession as it was applied (by no means uniformly) in the colonial territories of North America and, of course, as modified thereafter.
A lot would depend on whether Charlotte died having made a will. I can't recall any mention of that in the novel.
At the time of Charlotte's death, some US states still retained the old English law right of curtesy (abolished in England in 1925) under which a husband was entitled to a life interest in all of his deceased wife's land, provided that there was issue of the Marriage. That overrode any provision to the contrary in the deceased's will.
Humbert intimated to the Farlows that Dolores was actually his daughter - and then had John Farlow (not actually a lawyer) administer Charlotte's estate. I note that the house was rented after Charlotte's death, so if Ramsdale was in a state with rights of curtesy, the rent would have belonged to Humbert, not Dolores, irrespective of what was in Charlotte's will (assuming she actually made one).
The ultimate sales proceeds of the house would have belonged to whoever inherited Charlotte's estate (see below) but only after Humbert's death - until then, they would have been invested and Humbert would have been entitled to the income.
Would Dolores have been automatically entitled to a share of Charlotte's estate? If Charlotte died without having made a valid will, the answer would have been yes, under the appropriate statute dealing with intestate succession. But that would have been subject to any prior rights that Humbert would have had as surviving spouse, whether under the common law right of curtesy or under the relevant statute dealing with surviving spouses' rights in intestate succession.
What if Charlotte had made a will leaving everything to Humbert? The kind of forced heirship rules of succession in continental European legal systems which prevent a parent from disinheriting a child was originally unknown in English-type jurisdictions. However, statute law has intervened. Atkinson's Law of Wills, 2nd Edition (West Publishing Co, St. Paul Minn, 1953) says at page 141:
"By virtue of statutory provisions in almost every state, a child omitted from his parent's will may, under some circumstances, take his intestate share of the parent's estate."
In other words, the child may be able to overturn the will to the extent that it fails to make proper provision, by having the law of intestate succession apply in place of the will. To do that, Dolores would have needed some knowledge and some legal assistance.
But isn't this really beside the point? I don't think it matters what financial resources Dolores has available to her. Humbert's coerces Dolores into submission by threatening her with being incarcerated for her own misdeeds if she seeks help.
"So I go to jail. Okay. I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? Well, you are luckier. You become a ward of the Department of Public Welfare - which I am afraid sounds a little bleak. A nice grim matron of the Miss Phalen type, but more rigid and not a drinking woman, will take away your lipstick and fancy clothes. ..... I don't know if you have heard of the laws relating to dependent, neglected, incorrigible and delinquent children...." and so on.
And even when she writes to Humbert in 1952, Dolores is, I think, only 17 and would either still have felt unsure about her position with the authorities or possibly have assumed that, as Charlotte's widower, Humbert would have had de facto control of her estate, whatever the legal position might turn out to be.
Barrie Akin
> On 17 Oct 2015, at 22:43, Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@ATT.NET> wrote:
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> Your excellent and interesting question, though not being a lawyer I can't answer, raises another that I'm not sure I had ever considered before, which is, was Dolores actually Mr Hayes's (too spell him at his most likely actual name) daughter? Mrs H. says their daughter was engendered during their vacation (or was it honeymoon?) in Mexico (cf Hazel's origins in Nice), which would explain the name she was given, but is she telling the truth? Also, wasn't Mr. Hayes an insurance man? Or does your question merely plant that idea in my head? Of course, what I'm wondering is if her father was actually Quilty.
>
> And speaking of her given name, how did she come to be called Lolita (which, granted, is a diminutive of a diminutive for Dolores)? And speaking of diminutives, was Lolita was average height? short? tall? can't recall
>
> Carolyn
>
>
> On Oct 17, 2015, at 1:38 AM, Jansy Mello wrote:
>
> When a child’s parents die he/she necessarily inherits a percentage of the patrimony in my country: no lawful offspring can be deprived of a share in an inheritance when there is something material to inherit.
> Are matters different in America? Following the progression of Lolita’s travels away from her home and HH’s menaces that she’ll be left under state care if she divulges the violence she is suffering in his hands we find her being totally dependent on her stepfather who became the sole inheritor of house, furniture, pensions, even of her father’s ashes. When she writes him to ask for money, HH separates a generous sum to offer her as a gift as if, after the death of her mother, she had stopped to have any unalienable right to personal objects and history. Didn’t Charlotte Haze get a pension or an insurance after her husband died? (She was mainly a housekeeper, or not?). I cannot remember references to death taxes, inventories, documentation, whatever*. Her destiny is quite similar to V.Nabokov’s when forced to leave Russia.
>
> I lack the necessary legal vocabulary to better direct my questions. Her “homelessness” was not only a consequence of HH’s perverse actions but it also resulted from a specific kind of social organization?
> …………………………………
> *Humbert mentions letter-exchanges with a lawyer in Ramsdale: were these sufficient to deal with all the paperwork required in her situation?
> Google Search
> the archive Contact
> the Editors NOJ Zembla Nabokv-L
> Policies Subscription options AdaOnline NSJ Ada Annotations L-Soft Search the archive VN Bibliography Blog
> All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
>
> Google Search
> the archive Contact
> the Editors NOJ Zembla Nabokv-L
> Policies Subscription options AdaOnline NSJ Ada Annotations L-Soft Search the archive VN Bibliography Blog
> All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L