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Gaelen Foley’s Devil Takes a Bride set in 1818 deals with this. All though

SPOILER ALERT!!!
in the end, the hero finds a loop-hole out of the will.

Angel of the Knight by Diana Hall....the hero is the one set to inherit only if he marries some Lady Gwendolyn.

If you can use examples where marriage is necessary to inherit but doesn’t state a specific person, I’ve got more of those.

In Karen Hawkin’s The Abduction of Julia, the hero, Alec, must marry “the daughter of the late Earl of Covington.” He thinks it’s this one stuck-up girl, but there’s another person who fits the bill. The will also says they have to live scandal-free for a year or so. Good book too!

Check out Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.
Ward has to marry one of her guardian’s great-nephews to inherit her guardian’s money

It’s not a condition of marriage, but I’ve just read The Virtuous Courtesan by Mary Brendan (HMB historicals).  It’s a Regency.  The heroine is the mistress of a wealthy man who has just died, and his brother stands to inherit, if he ‘protects’ the mistress.  That didn’t seem like the sort of thing that could stand up in court to me!

I know I’ve read this device a gazillion times, but I fear it was in my mum’s old category historicals, when I was a teenager, and they’re now long gone.

Valentine by Jane Feather deals with this as well.  It’s good a book but I haven’t read it in years.

http://www.amazon.com/Valentine-Jane-Feather/dp/0553564706/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Joan Wolf’s Someday Soon
(must marry particular duke of whatever - new heir appears)

In Cotillion, the guardian is just threatening to leave his money away from his ward - he is not actually dead, so the will wouldn’t have to hinge on a future marriage.

Why can’t I remember the other 450 books I’ve read with this plot device?

I can’t think of the name, but doesn’t Garwood use this plot device a lot?

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer.
(2 down, 449 to go...)

Victoria Alexander has a Regency (not sure about the exact date) called Let It Be Love that deals with this. I think that she also has another one that has a similar plot but for the life of me I can’t remmber the name of it and I’m at work so I can’t check my shelves ;) Hope this helps.

Catherine Coulter’s The Heir deals with “marry her or you’ll just get the title”. I don’t remember if the will is quoted or anything but there you go.

Thanks for all the ideas!  I am investigating them as we speak.

But I throw this out there to make things easy on people.  Georgette Heyer never actually uses this precise plot device (she knows better than that).

In Bath Tangle, the Will appoints Ivo guardian, and gives him the right to grant consent to marriage--but does not require the heroine marry anyone in particular.  And in Cotillion, IIRC, there is no will; her guardian is alive and just promises to bestow the fortune if she marries one of his nephews.

I’ve never actually seen Heyer mess up a will issue--she is actually quite careful in setting up plot devices.  It’s only the people that follow her that don’t realize that the irascible guardian is not an interchangeable ruse in the marriage-by-convenience plot, but a legal necessity.

The Wyndham Legacy by Catherine Coulter has almost exactly the plot you are looking for, in that the marriage between the two was the end goal of the way the will was worded. Also, the herione is very forceful about making the marriage happen in order to save the hero, which is endearing, if a bit stubborn.

You might be thinking of Victoria Alexander’s The Husband List.  It states she has to marry to inherit, but I don’t think it mentions a particular person.

Bath Tangle doesn’t fit the “forced to marry” any more than Cotillion does—its not that the heroine is constrained to marry someone: rather her father makes her former fiance (she jilted him) into her guardian & puts him in control of her inheritance.

I second the Joan Wolf & Jane Feather examples.

I’m just curious...does her presentation talk about wills during regency England (or any other period prior to the 20th century)?  Or is this using modern wills and our understanding of them?

Since I thought most women could not inherit property (this was the worry of the mother in Pride & Prejudice, since she had all daughters), I would think this kind of thing might actually have been legal back in the day. How to keep the $$ in the family?  Why, by marrying your cousin or the person who is to inherit the fortune. Once again, just like Lizzie in Pride & Prejudice who was ‘set up’ with the dorky religious guy who would inherit the family home.

So, I wonder about the history of this kind of thing in England before the modern day. Or am I misreading what her presentation is about?

The Wyndham Legacy by Catherine Coulter has a variation on this theme. The hero has to marry the heroine in order to inherit his uncle’s money, otherwise she gets all of the money and the trusteeship over the estates and he only gets the entailed properties and an allowance.

Devil Takes a Bride is the only one I can think of, but Keri beat me to it. I am curious about one thing - was it legal to stipluate in a will that a settlement of money would be contingent upon the recipient marrying someone by a certain date without mentioning, i.e. without naming a specific person? Julia Quinn definitely had one of those - Brighter than the Sun, I think.

Heyer probably didn’t mess up the will thing because her husband was a barrister so he could have set her straight on legal issues! :-)

If you’ll also accept books involving wills where the hero or heroine must marry within a specific span of time, but the person they’re supposed to marry isn’t named, then Mary Jo Putney’s The Bargain (formerly The Would-Be Widow) might work.

KG, this is a presentation on wills in Regency England.

It’s just not true that women couldn’t inherit property.  They could, and did, all the time.  (In fact, if you recall, Lizzie stood to inherit 500 pounds from her mother eventually.) The problem in Pride & Prejudice is that the property was entailed, and so couldn’t be given away.  More specifically (since the property was not entailed in the way most people think of entails), Mr. Bennet had a life estate in his property, with the remainder (the estate after Mr. Bennet dying) going to his closest male heir.  That Lizzie cannot inherit is not solely a function of her sex; it is a function of how the property was granted.

(And that is why there is a cryptic line in the book of how Mr. Bennet found economy perfectly unnecessary, because he was to have a son, and together they would have joined in cutting off the entail.)

Women could definitely own property.

In fact, contrary to modern beliefs, married women could own property separate from their husbands--under certain very specific circumstances, if their guardians were smart when they married.

The truth is, there are a lot of drastic misconceptions about what can and can’t be done, and that is why (shameless plug alert) my workshop is going to be both useful and fun!

I just want to say, Courtney is the SHIT when it comes to this stuff!  I envy those writers who’ll get to hear her.

Celeste Bradley’s Desperate Duchesses series has a man leaving money to one of his granddaughters—the first one to marry a duke. The duke is not named. Just any duke. I’m not sure if his granddaughters were born at the time he died. Is that necessary?

Sounds like an excellent workshop. Will be there if I’m not required to be somewhere else...but then I’m also getting the workshop CDs, so maybe I can listen to it later, if I can’t be there…

Oh, Gail, I have already included Celeste Bradley’s will.  That will is definitely worthy of discussion for several reasons.

Debbie Raleigh: The Wedding Clause

Didn’t Heyer’s The Reluctant Widow deal with this in a roundabout way?  Sleazy guy has been mortally wounded in duel, his relatives have to marry him off to someone before he bites the dust or they won’t get to keep the estate, enter confused heroine who thinks she’s applying for position as governess, etc. etc.

Another Regency dealing with wills is the hilarious Aunt Sophie’s Diamonds by Joan Smith.  (Okay, that one has nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with grave-robbing, but it bears mentioning just for the entertainment value.)

Oh yeah, and in my fave Regency of all time, Jeffery Farnol’s The Broad Highway, whichever nephew marries a certain heiress within a year gets the bulk of the estate, 500,000 BPS.  Failing that, each gets a pittance and the money goes to charity.  This is long out of print but readily available used (try to find the original and not the Barbara Cartland’s Library of Love abridged version) and has actual quotes from the will in Chapter One!

family83:  family can be strange when it comes to money!

Well, there’s Middlemarch, which was not only set but also written in England before 1873.  Although in that case it wasn’t “You only get the money if you marry X” but “You only get the money if you don’t marry X.”

Mary Balogh’s Courting Julia

From her Web site:  “When Julia Maynard’s step-grandfather dies, he leaves Julia nothing even though she has lived with him all her life and tended him in his last illness and loved him - and even though he appeared to adore her.  But he does leave his precious unentailed home, Primrose Park, to whichever of his five nephews can win her hand within a month of the reading of the will.”

In Karan Harbaugh’s, “Miss Carlyle’s Curricle” (1999) The heroine (Diana) will get a large inheritance if she marries the hero (Gavin.) If she doesn’t marry him, she gets a very small bequest. She is also left a curricle as part of her inheritance, but it doesn’t depend on her marriage to Gavin. The reading of the will is part of the story. I’d have to check the book at home for the exact text.

Catherine Coulter’s The Heir has this plot line.

Castle of the Wolf by Sandra Schwab, deals with a young lady who stands to inherit a castle, but only if she marries the son of the man who USED to own the castle within three months.

Stephanie Laurens had A Lady Chosen. Hero had to marry within a year, or the money would go to charity (?) AND he would still have to support a gazillion “meddling, but kind-hearted” aging female relatives.

[edit]

Perhaps I should have read more carefully.  I see that you’re looking specifically for monetary examples.  Sorry!

Anne Gracie’s Perfect _____. Ah the one with the youngest daughter, Grace. The Perfect Kiss. It’s about a man who won’t inherit his ancestral manor unless he marries a certain girl. At first he doesn’t care, but then he falls in love with the girl’s friend, Grace, who is there posing as the girl’s companion.

The hero of Nicola Cornick’s The Penniless Bride has to contend with two wills at once:  he inherits 30 thousand pounds from his late father only on condition that he marry “one of the young ladies present at the marriage of his cousin” (which takes place the day after the will reading) and he inherits 40 thousand pounds from his grandmother only if he stays celibate for one hundred days after her will is read (the same day).  He can’t stand any of the ‘young ladies” in question, so he gets around the will by marrying a chimneysweep’s daughter who happens to be there ( she has been educated like a lady).  They manage to stay chaste for 100 days, but its a struggle :-D

I was going to say the Celeste Bradley Duchesses series as well, mostly because those were the most recent ones I remember. I don’t believe they were alive when the will was written, as they had three generations in which to marry a duke.  And there was a case of adoption as well, which I thought was extremely convenient.

I think Wilma Counts’ “Willed to Wed” has this kind of plot (the title would certainly indicate it does), but I can’t remember if I’ve actually read the book so can’t say for sure.

Stephanie Laurens, Scandals’ Bride.  Richard marries Catriona under the terms of a will.

Scandal’s Bride has the same problem as Gracie’s The Perfect ____, in that it takes place in Scotland, not England.  The rules in Scotland as to marriage are probably what they were in England, but there are enough minor differences between the two (they have separate courts of Chancery, not all Acts of Parliament cover Scotland) and I’ve seen it matter in questions of property (e.g. you cannot break an entail in Scotland by suffering a common recovery) before, and my resources are not great under Scottish law.  So I’m trying to stick to England itself, and not branch out into the rest of the UK.

In Georgette Heyer’s The Reluctant Widow, the relative of the dying sleaze was anxious to marry him to someone so that he could leave his estate to her, NOT so that the relative could retain the estate. He was trying to avoid the appearance that he had ever had any designs on the sleaze’s estate.

The Wyndham Legacy by Catherine Coulter has a variation on this theme. The hero has to marry the heroine in order to inherit his uncle’s money, otherwise she gets all of the money and the trusteeship over the estates and he only gets the entailed properties and an allowance.

What She Wants by Lynsay Sands has almost the same story line.  He is the new Earl of Hillcrest after his uncle dies, but his uncle’s ward inherits all the money unless he marries her.  Of course, he doesn’t find that detail out until after he’s already insulted her and told her he has no wish to marry her, so he has to jump through a lot of hoops to get her to accept.  I no longer have the book to look up details, but I think it was set in England.

I’m always fascinated by those ‘must remain celibate’ type clauses.  Is there supposed to be a clerk following the hero around?  A legal padlock on his britches?  How exactly is that sort of will enforced?

I was reading recently how a woman was only regarded by law by her relationship to a man: wife, daughter, sister, ward.  Without a relationship like that, she had very little legal status, which is why marriage was so important.

There were plenty of heiresses (I know I’ve read lots of books about those!), but I think it was more likely that a female hair would inherit money, while the property and land would go to a male heir.  This is what entailment is about: ensuring the property isn’t broken up by many inheritors (for instance if Mrs Bennet and her daughters all had to live off the estate.  If any of the daughters married, then her portion of the estate would also be supporting her new husband and family, and leaving the other sisters with even less) and making sure the estate passes to a male heir (f it passed to a female hair, then it would be absorbed into her husband’s property, and wouldn’t stay in the family--a big foundation of aristocratic position is family land).

A rich man who had both land and money would settle the estate on his oldest son, and then provide cash for the other children.  The problems arose when there wasn’t enough money for the younger sons, which is why it was often the fashion for them to join the army and clergy; and why the daughters had to marry!

Margarita by Joan Wolf and
The Actress and The Rake by Carola Dunn

In Watch The Wall, My Darling by Jane Aiken Hodge, the heroine must marry one of her two cousins, otherwise the estate/money will go to some sort of charity.

“When I die, I propose that the income shall be divided equally between Ross and Richard. . .  Quiet, Ross, I am coming to Christina. She gets everything else. . . the Abbey, the shingle, the marsh, the sheep—on two conditions. First, that she keep her aunt here as long as she wishes to stay. Second, that she marry either you, Ross, or Richard.” A lifted hand compelled silence. “No, I’ll not be interrupted! And, if it’s Richard, he’s to change his name to Tretteign. At least, thus, the name continues.” He stopped, surveying them broodingly from the depths of his chair.”
...
“If, when my will is proved, you, Christina, are not married either to Richard or to Ross, Mrs. Tretteign’s income remains the same, the rest is divided between the three of you, and the Abbey goes to the Patriotic Fund. “

I’m not sure of the date, but it’s set during the blockade of the English coast by Napoleon’s navy, so I think that fits in. And it’s near Rye, so I think that’s not Scotland…

Sounds like a fabulous seminar.

I spent more hours than I can count reading up on Edward I’s inheritance reforms. His provided the catalyst that, imho, changed the face of England when it came to womens’ property rights.

Anne Gracie’s book is The Perfect Kiss.  I’m not sure on the time although it is a historical.  The hero can only inherit / get the ancestral home if he marries Melly (the heroine’s best friends).  The marriage was arranged via contract when the hero was 16 and Melly was 9 or so.  Melly’s dad is the only one who can negate the stipulation in the will.  Of course through most of the book he is adamant that the hero marry his daughter Melly so that she will be safe (married, wealthy) after his death.  So, it has a will stipulation but that is backed up by some sort of agreement / contract.

Stephanie Laurens uses a similar plot to this in at least one of her Bastion Club books.  The man inherits everything (title, houses, houses full of old biddy aunts, cousins, etc) but only gets the money to support it all if he marries within a year.  Doesn’t specify who the bride has to be, only that he has to marry.

I can’t find my copy of this book, so I’m not sure if this is a will or a ‘betrothal agreement’, but “The Magnificent Mirabelle” by Lydia Lee has the plot line that the hero must marry the oldest daughter of *some old family friend*, and the daughters happen to be twins.  That’s the only one that stands out specifically in my memory, though I know I’ve read others (aside from The Wyndham Legacy, as previously mentioned by others).

Mary Balogh’s short story, “The North Tower”. I believe it’s part of the anthology, “Moonlight Lovers”. And since it’s a paranormal romance, perhaps it’s not quite valid for your presentation…

So, the contingencies of the will… Daphne inherits Roscoe Castle from her maternal grandfather if she marries the Earl of Everett (a neighbor who covets the castle). If they don’t marry within 3 months, ownership passes to a nameless cousin in America…

The Rule Against Perpetuities isn’t so bad once you worked through it.

The Fertile Octogenarian and the Unborn Widow would make a great title for a book. 

Unenforceable wills in books always annoyed me so I can’t help there.  It would be interesting though if someone would manage to bust one of those wills.  The fall out might be fun.

And one other thing-- how come curtesy (the male equivalent of dower) never appears in romances?  You would think all those men who were thought to have murdered their heiress wives would have caused the issue to surface somewhere.  Sorry for the rambling!

“The Female Quixote” by Charlotte Lennox.  It’s not technically an historical because it’s from the 18th century.  In it the heroine gets some money from her deceased father, but will get the entire estate as long as she marries her cousin--although I think that’s just because of the “entailed property goes to a male heir, so she ‘owns’ it as his wife” thing.