Marriage, land and law. Signing a marriage contract in Normandy and Ile-de-France, at the time of the Napoleonic Code

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article should aim to better understand the importance and the role of the prenuptial agreement in the regions where the ‘système de partage égalitaire’ (partible inheritance) prevailed in nineteenth century France. In some regions, under Ancien Regime ‘coutumes’, prenuptial agreement played a important role in the installation of a new household and, in some systems, it was crucial in the transmission of wealth from one generation to another. Indeed, it is quite easy to understand the importance of the prenuptial agreement in inequal inheritance system; but it is more difficult to explain the existence of such contracts in the partible inheritance regions where the transmission of wealth, the rule of inheritance, was, and is always, very simple: the heritage is equally divided between heirs (male and female) without donation or will. How then can we explain the overall growth in the number of marriage contracts at the beginning of the 19th century and the great variability in the use of this practice by region? Does this usage reflect a new desire on the part of families to better control the process of transmission of property within the new framework of the Civil Code? Through two databases of contracts we try to assess the factor which explained the choice to enact a contract or to do not. The first one is cross sectional for the year 1822 for six micro regions in the core of the Paris Basin. The second one is longitudinal (1813–26) for the region of Vernon (in Normandy) at the border of the Paris Basin. Both corpus highlight the role of the life course, marital status, and family configuration of each spouse but also the often-underestimated role of notaries, their habits, and legal practices in the choice of the type of contract.