The Hereditary Legal Status of Women among the Permian Peoples in Customary and Positive Law in the XVIII-XIX centuries

Abstract

The study of the features of the hereditary legal status of women among the Perm Finno-Ugric peoples (Komi, Udmurts), as well as the mechanism of its consolidation in customary and positive law within the framework of historical events of the 18th - 19th centuries, is quite relevant today. The purpose of this work is to study through the historical and legal analysis of the hereditary and legal status of women among the Permian peoples, enshrined in the norms of customary and positive law in the 18th - 19th centuries. As a result of the analysis, the authors come to the conclusion that the hereditary legal status of women among the Permian peoples, enshrined not only in customary law, but also in the norms of positive law in the 18th - 19th centuries, had its own specifics. According to custom, when getting married, the daughter received a dowry, after which she was considered separated from the family, and was deprived of her inheritance rights to a part of the family-wide hereditary mass. However, in cases when a primak husband who married the daughter of the head of the family was accepted into the family, she continued to use the common family property, acquiring equal inheritance rights with the brothers. A woman in widow status was not always deprived of her property rights. The custom allowed the widow to stay with her married son, to whom most of the family property was transferred. If the widow did not remarry, then she was the rightful heiress of all property jointly acquired with her spouse, especially in the case when the children were already separated from their parents. The customary law of the Permian peoples, supplementing the positive law, protected the inherited common family property from transferring to non-blood relatives, therefore the widow lost her rights to the property of her deceased first spouse in the event of her remarriage. This was also facilitated by of sororate and levirate that existed and were widely used in the customary law of the Permian peoples. The authors examined various historical and historical-legal sources, including archival documents, publications in periodicals, as well as legislative acts of the Russian state, consolidated in the PSZ.