Deathwatches

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

At some point, I'm going to be starting another Keptverse series, and I started wondering....what happens when a master dies? Presumably, you can will your slaves to your heirs, but until the estate is settled, would Commerce want someone in the household to make sure no one tries to run? What do people think?

ETA: To be more specific:

Lord X has been ill for several years, and has been comatose for the past few months. His breathing and heart rate suddenly become very erratic, so his Agent calls the doctor. About two hours later, the monitor flatlines. It's 3 am. What happens next?

Comments

Slaves as fungible.

[skeptic7.livejournal.com]

In other KeptVerse stories, an heir has inherited slaves. Dylan and Liam both have their parents' slaves. In the Hawaii system, its likely that slaves wouldn't go up for probate as part of an estate since they were owned by the clan as a whole and not by individuals.
But what would really be fun, would be in case of a disputed inheritance, or someone dying intestate, would be for Commerce to just collect all the slaves and only return the equivalence or the monetary value to the heirs. For example if a man died without writing a clear will and his son and his daughter were fighting over the property, Commerce could collect and resell his slaves, and six years later when the legal wrangling finished, return a Black, male, 28 year old trained body slave but not necessarily the original person. Or just the slave's value in cash.
I think that Commerce would have a vested interest in keeping wierd legal schemes down. For example, what if Dylan puts all his money in a trust with the trustees to maintain his house and his slaves for the duration of the slaves' life span with provisions that neither the house nor the slaves be sold? Then Dylan tries a scheme for the slaves to be their own trustees.
A working farm might need the labor of all its slaves to function and someone would have to oversee it. A house could be closed up and the staff kept in Commerce's escrow.