Who inherits 12 Gimmauld Place?

[o_caipora]

No: HPFGUIDX 82086

Message 75604 will drop you into the midst of a recent thread on 
this, with a list of links to older threads on the same topic.

 "Robert Jones" <jones.r.h.j at w...> wrote:
> Maybe the property of condemned 
> prisioners goes to the Ministry.  (In colonial New England, the 
laws 
> of England of the time applied, and the property of executed 
> prisoners was forfeited to the colony.)

Interesting. IIRC this happens in David Copperfield; his benefactor 
returns to England in defiance of the terms of his exile, and 
forfeits his fortune. 

> If the MoM doesn't get the property and Sirius didn't leave a will, 
> what laws of inheritance apply?  Not the Laws of England but the 
> Laws of Rowling -- JKR may have some clever and funny law of 
> intestate succession in mind for the Wizarding World.

Literature may be a better guide than law; Rowling is certainly more 
familiar with Austen and Dickens than with Black. Entailment is old 
in law and literature, turning up in the Canterbury Tales.

England has a tradition of primogeniture and male inheritance. 
Scotland AFAIK has for centuries given greater respect to women's 
right to inheirit.  

Two clues that entailment is in the wings are that a) Sirius 
inherited the house despite his mother's intense dislike of him, 
which argues she didn't have the power to disinherit; and b) Rowling 
so carefully showed us that Draco is the closest male heir. 

She could have had the family tree show Draco as a relative without 
making him the closest male heir. She didn't. I smell plot twist.