348 
Widows and their proper-tv 
in-law alive. But this supposes the inferior wives to have been free, 
for if slave debtors they are not entitled. Loubere has described the 
course of succession in different terms from the Digests. He ob- 
serves that “ the great wife takes first of the deceased husband’s pro- 
* c- 
* c perty and then her children. The little wives remaining the pro- 
perty of the heir, and not inheriting.”* (Transl: of Loubere’s 
History of Siam.) 
Where a widow has been twice married, and has had a family by 
her first husband, should she have a family by her second marriage 
also, that family will take five shares more than the step children in 
the event of the death of the second husband. In some commenta¬ 
ries the step children are not allowed to share; since it is supposed 
that they receive a portion from their father’s Estate. If there are 
no children by the second marriage, the step children seem entitled 
only to one sixth part of one of the three shares of the Estate. But 
I cannot find in the Digests the reason for this rule. 
A widow who marries a widower and hears a family to him, takes 
the usual third. Should she have no children she takes one half of 
one of the portions. 
A widow may marry her deceased husband’s brother, or the son 
of the brother. And the converse holds good in the case of a man 
marrying a deceased wife’s sister. But such unions are not much 
countenanced, and the first may be safely deemed obsolete. 
Such property as a widow may have personally acquired, or have 
brought as a portion to her husband, or have received from him as a 
gift, remains her’s under every circumstance ; and will not be taken 
into account on the division of her deceased husband’s property. 
There are four classes of wives in Siam, [although Loubere only 
admits of two, viz., the “ great wife and lesser tvives, the latter being 
all slaves .”] 1st. Those bestowed by the King on Officers of the 
Government either as rewards for good conduct, or from a politic 
* « The chief wife succeeds to all, then for her children, wbo inherit from 
their parents equal portions.” 
« inferior wives may be sold as also their children by the heir, and they 
depend on his pleasure and on what they received trom the lather before his 
death.”—M. de la Louberc’s Siam, p, 22. 
