Sibling Rivalry

The morning walk with Elvis takes me around some of the local oddities. In this case, the strip of vines in the middle of a field of wheat. It is one of those peculiar effects of French inheritance law. When property passes from one generation to the next, the inheritance is divided equally between all children; this includes land. For the most part, this is invisible to anyone outside the family, but where agricultural land is concerned, we wind up with situations like this. One of the children does not want to grow the same crop as the others. So, they have their vines on their land. This means that we find strips of land either untended, growing wild as they see fit. When we were originally house hunting, we came across a house that had several children fighting over its value. It had not been sold because one of the children was holding out for more than it was worth and was vetoing any sale agreed by the others. On another occasion, a house just outside St Emilion - a real doer-upper - which was for sale at a reasonable price was on the market with pictures of a traditional fishing cabin on the property. However, when we asked, we were told that the sale of the cabin (a very attractive aspect of the house and the main selling point) was being blocked by one brother who wanted to continue using it, even though it would remain on the property he was trying to sell. The sale did not progress, as the house slowly fell into more and more ruin.