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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