The tumultuous history of a marriage settlement
After the meeting in Voorde and the official wedding, the aldermen registered two contracts listing the wedding gifts that Jan and Gertrude were receiving from their fathers. Gertrude’s contract was registered shortly after the marriage, on 17 July 1433.34 Gertrude’s father gave his daughter and son-in-law the fief of Oostkerke along with other items.
This contract does not mention the abduction, and the clerk drew up the contract in the normal manner for a wedding. Simon Van Formelis registered his contract three months later because of the conflict that had arisen between him and his son, that is to say the conflict mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Jan summoned his father to the court of the aldermen of the Keure because Simon refused to pay the annuity of 50 pounds groten. As described in the introduction, Jan and Simon agreed to settle the conflict soon, in accordance with the aldermen’s decision. Three months later, on 9 October 1433, Jan and Simon appeared again before the aldermen of the Keure, who then officially registered a contract listing all the gifts Simon gave to his son and his new wife because of their marriage. This contract also does not include a single word about the abduction which preceded the marriage.There are two significant aspects to these contracts. The first is the requirement in both contracts that a portion of the wedding gift be returned to the estate upon the death of the parents. Wedding gifts could not contradict the principle of equal inheritance, since these gifts were really only an advance on the child’s inheritance. When the parents died and their estates were divided, a part of all gifts had to be returned to the estate to comply with the law of equal inheritance and to avoid favouritism.35 Jan and Gertrude’s contracts include stipulations that they had to return portions of what they had received at their marriage when their parents died.
The contract of Jan van Oostkerke sets the following condition: after his death, his daughter and son-in-law had to return 4,000 �nobles’ (a local currency36) to Jan’s estate. After Simon’s death, Jan van Formelis had to put into the estate either 3,000 nobles or the fief of Sint-Denijs-Boekel, which he received after his marriage.37 The conditions in both contracts became the subject of disputes in later lawsuits. Another significant aspect is that the discussions between Jan van Formelis and his father did not go smoothly, since the contract about the gifts was not registered until three months after the lawsuit between father and son. The probability of contention in the negotiations between Jan and his father is reinforced by the act recorded in the register right after the copy of the marital contract. On 7 October, two days before the sealing of Simon’s marriage gift contract, Jan officially promised to demand nothing more from his parents in the future. He promised to �release his father’ from any future accusation concerning his matrimonial goods, �while at the same time trusting his father and mother to reasonably compensate him’.38 As it turned out, Jan found this promise difficult to keep.Jan was not the only troublemaker. His wife also set herself up as a persistent litigant, bent on achieving her goals through legal actions against her family and in-laws. However, before going more deeply into her legal agency, we must consider another episode in Jan and Gertrude’s tempestuous conjugal life. In June 1441, Jan and Gertrude separated �in bed and board’. After eight years of living together, they agreed to divide their matrimonial property. Such a separation (called �a mensa et thora’) occurred regularly in the Low Countries. It meant that the marriage was still valid (because it could not be destroyed) but that husband and wife would live apart.39 The episcopal court had the jurisdiction to approve and declare such separations, but secular authorities dealt with the socio-economic consequences. The ecclesiastical record of Jan and Gertrude’s divorce does not survive, but we know that they applied afterwards to the aldermen to arrange apportionment of their property and care of their children.
The aldermen’s registers state that the couple came in accord (eendrachtelic comen) to the court to register the division of their goods, indicating that Gertrude and Jan had agreed to the practical arrangements for their separation.40 Henceforth, each would own and manage his/her own property. Jan assumed the custody and support of their two sons, while Gertrude did the same for their daughter. Jan and Gertrude could now live in separate residences and were no longer obliged to fulfil their conjugal duties. Furthermore, they were no longer considered one legal entity.41 The source reads that Gertrude became haers sellefs wijf (�her own woman’), meaning that she was no longer subject to her husband’s guardianship. She could now initiate lawsuits on her own and did not need her husband’s approval, nor did she have to inform him of her actions.Although in July 1433 there was no sign of a conflict between Gertrude and her father about their arrangement, Gertrude did try to escape paying 4,000 nobelen to the estate after her father died. In September 1441, shortly after her separation, Gertrude sued her stepfather Jan Blanckaert, who was acting on behalf of his wife, Gertrude’s mother. She requested to be released from the condition in her father’s gift contract requiring her to pay her father’s other heirs 4,000 nobelen. Gertrude wanted the aldermen to invalidate this stipulation because (1) she was not present at the time the marriage settlement was discussed and so had not given her consent; (2) the clause disadvantaged her by favouring her younger sister Yolente. Gertrude considered the aforementioned sum too high, because as a result her sister would receive more of their parents’ estate, which she charged was �unreasonable’.42 Gertrude’s reference to her absence is particularly important because the presence of the spouses was not obligatory in marriage gift negotiations. Due to their socio-political and economic importance, these events were usually reserved for male relatives.
However, in Ghent, female relatives were often involved, and it was customary to hear the future wife’s opinion.43 Nevertheless, local custom considered her consent less important, and it was not a requirement for the validity of the gift.It is thus not surprising that the aldermen sided with Jan Blanckaert and rejected Gertrude’s argument. Jan argued that he had not been involved in the discussions over his stepdaughter’s marriage. Moreover, Jan claimed that Gertrude’s allegation about the inequality of the inheritance of the sisters was not a matter for the Ghent aldermen. Agreeing with him, the aldermen declared that Gertrude had sued the wrong man and directed her to pursue the matter with her father’s heirs rather than with her stepfather. The case was left at that, and the aldermen did not pass final judgement. Though Gertrude did not win the issue, she may have taken legal action in another court, even though there is no surviving evidence. In any case, Gertrude had clearly presented herself as a bold legal agent for the first time. Her act shows that women had legal options, and that they were not afraid to use them. Gertrude’s appearance before the aldermen might merely be explained by the fact that she could sue without the consent of her husband because she was now haer sellefs wijf. Historiography generally states that a wife’s loss of legal personhood upon marriage was often accompanied by practical limits on female economic and legal engagement, whereby wives were prohibited from suing in the common law courts.44 However, Gertrude soon took the lead as a married woman as well.