Lex Voconia: Roman inheritance laws concerning women

Lex Voconia (The Voconian Law) was a Roman law established in 169 BCE.

Q. Voconius Saxa introduced it with support from Cato the Elder, Voconius was a tribune of the people in that year.  The law prohibited anyone who owned property valued at 100,000 sesterces from making a woman heir. The limit was not arbitrary:  it was the traditional minimum property qualification for admission to the highest class in the Comitia Centuriata (the Order of Knights). The law also prohibited bequests of extraordinary legacies that were greater than the inheritance of the ordinary heirs. 

According to Gellius, the intent of the law was to limit the wealth available to women, who were presumed to expend it on useless luxury goods. The law was evaded by means of Avoiding registration in the census was a way of evading the law, although that meant the loss of some civil rights.  Another way of evading the law was the common Roman form of trust known as a “fidecommissum.” 

The second provision of the law was voided by the Lex Falcidia (Lex Falcidia permitted a testator to dispose of three-fourths of his property, but he could not deprive his heir of the other fourth. The law was introduced by Faldicius, a tribune, and enacted during the reign of Augustus).  The Lex Papia Poppaea relaxed the first provision as well, granting full inheritance rights to married women who were mothers of three children (if the mother was born free) or of four children (if a freedwoman).

Contrast Lex Voconia with the daughers of Zelophehad, which permitted daughters to inherit as long as they married within the family to ensure that the inheritance would not leave the family.