Disinheritance

[M. Caecilius]

There is an interesting case regarding Marcus Aurelius that Birley discusses on page 137 of his biography. A man named Valerius Nepos had taken the physical copy of his will and crossed out names, some of which were apparently heirs and some of which were slaves to be freed. When he died this went to court, with the problem being if these crossed-out names were disinherited or not. Marcus decided that the dead man had disinherited the people whose names had been crossed out, based upon a precedent set by Antoninus Pius in a similar case. This may not have been the proper way to disinherit, but Marcus wanted to "consider that Nepos wanted what he had crossed out to be void."

A fascinating sidenote, though, is that Marcus allowed the slaves who had been crossed out to be freed anyway, because he had "a partiality for freedom." So the crossed-out heirs were disinherited, but the crossed-out slaves were freed.

Nice. I checked if I could find that: it's Dig.28.4.3 = Marcellus Dig. 29.