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

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Lots of interesting ideas here.

Because it is complicated, I'd think that one of the requirements of owning slaves would be to have a will. At the very least, you have to clearly dispose of your slaves and/or their monetary value at your death; commerce doesn't care about your house or your money or whatever, but at the very least you have to have a will that deals with your slaves.

There are still going to be disputes, though, because what if an owner dies in debt? It wouldn't have to be enough debt to have put the owner in any danger of being enslaved, but enough that the status of the slaves are in dispute.

Say Joe dies with 5mil in cash, a house worth 2mil, land worth 10mil, slaves worth 6mil, and a debt of 8mil. He leaves the house plus 1mil in cash to his wife, the land plus 2mil cash to his son, and the slaves plus 2mil cash to his daughter. Do all three give up their cash, plus kick in another mil in cash to pay the debt? Do they sell the house and 60% of the land? (Imagine Mom and Bro screaming that they're paying all the debt while Sis walks off with all the slaves.) Even if sis kicks in her 2mil cash to help pay the debt, that's not enough to cover a third of 8mil -- if she doesn't have the money on her own, she has to sell one or more slaves to pay her share of the debt.

Except the way things work now, debts are discharged before property is distributed. So what if Bro is the executor and he sells all the slaves, putting up that 6mil plus 2mil of the cash to pay the debt, then discharges the terms of the will. Sorry, Sis, no slaves for you to inherit, and you only get a little over a mil in cash. Sucks to be you.

Sis: Lawsuit time!

Anyway. [cough] It could definitely be fun. I don't know that Commerce would particularly care, so long as the slaves aren't damaged or otherwise devalued while the disputes go on.

I could see another set of hostels, though -- Probate, right next door to Escrow. :)

In the case of a household that's just a house, I could see it being shut up and the slaves taken to Probate until the executor disposes of them as per the will. In the case of a working estate or a business, there'd have to be some free person there to be responsible anyway, I would think -- a free manager or overseer or supervisor or whatever, since the slaves couldn't be legally responsible for the operation of the business.

I can see Commerce temporarily confiscating unsupervised slaves, much as the SPCA confiscates unsupervised animals. If you have a good reason why they were left alone (and "Granny died and it took us a week to find out and get to her house to fetch Fluffy" is usually considered a good reason) then you'll usually get the animal back, assuming you want it. So if Jeff died, Commerce might confiscate the slaves at the same time the SPCA came for the horses, if there was no free person there to take responsibility while the estate was sorted out.

In the case of a business which is actually a corporation, the corporation doesn't die just because a major stockholder or corporate officer does, so things would just go on as normal. The slaves would still be owned by the corporation and it probably wouldn't make much difference in their day-to-day activities that Bob Boss kicked the bucket, because Mike Boss would step in and likely have them keep on doing whatever. I think most of this would pertain to personal slaves rather than business-owned slaves.

Angie