Rural feminism, err, what's that?

Marking place to read later :-)

Can I ask a question to those posters who have defended the currently predominant system by saying "You can't break up the farm" - what happens when a family has, say, two, three or even four sons, all who take an equal interest in the farm? Presumably then the parents see the inequity of only leaving to one son?

But if they have three sons and one daughter, it's OK to exclude the daughter?

I'm sorry to hear you are going through this.

We, of course, do not not know what your full family history or current relationship is like with them, however, you may consider something along the lines of an Occupation Order.

You could repost in MN Legal and ask your solicitor for further information.

I wish you luck.

My MIL and FIL will not move out of my house claiming they have nowhere else to stay. My MIL and FIL will not pay rent for living in my house claiming they have no money either, despite buying a new tractor recently. My MIL and FIL continue to use my farm buildings without payment claiming they have nowhere else to store machinery or house livestock. My MIL and FIL continue to arrange deliveries to a property that they don't own, accessed via a track they don't own, to be stored in buildings they don't own and paid for using money they claim not to have.
(Summary of a recent letter from my solicitor to them)

"Various male members of the extended family ganged up on me even before the funeral to urge me to sign away what Mike had left me"

So they knew full well the value of what you were entitled to and also a bedsit apartment - with restrictions - was an insulting exchange.

I am glad it is working out for you although it sounds as if you still have issues regarding your In-laws in your home, and on your property.

It wasn't Mike's death or supporting me that was top of FIL and MIL's "to do" list. It was what was going to happen to the farm! Various male members of the extended family ganged up on me even before the funeral to urge me to sign away what Mike had left me. In the end somebody from my last foster family stayed with me pretty much 24/7 to keep them away. The best offer Mike's parents came up with would have given me £200 per week and one room in exchange for 1/3 of the farm.

Thank goodness for your foster parents FF.

This has been one of the most interesting threads I have read in MN: one of the most educational.

It's amazing to see how rigidly land is passed through paternal lines as opposed to maternal lines as in other countries/communities.

I do live there but don't farm. My MIL and FIL have never been friendly to me. Not nasty but as if I didn?t count. I always felt that I was on trial and they were just waiting for me to fall. When I was widowed they seemed to assume that the Will leaving me Mike?s share of the farm could just be ignored and that I would either move away and out of their lives or I would agree to living in a 1 room bed-sit in the farmhouse with them ?generously? paying me about £200 per week. They also wanted all sorts of rules about parking spaces and when I could cook and things like that. It was like I was going to be a lodger and not a 1/3 partner!
Luckily my foster parents helped me pay for decent legal advice which is how I got a much fairer share of things. I own the house but MIL and FIL expect to live here rent free and that argument hasn't been sorted yet. They also expect free use of the barns and stores and that also isn't sorted.

Out of interest, do you still live/farm there?

Glad that you won in the end. In what other situation would a widow (from a family where there is substantial land/business) be expected to walk away with just a few grand a year?

This has a wider impact on non farming families who live in rural places. And more than just gender issues, but conformity generally. farming communities can be so conservative, and ostracise people who are 'other' .

Just wanting to say that the difficulties for women are in a wider context. Geographical isolation will compound lack of tolerance.

The first offer I was made when my husband died (1/3 of the profit from the farm) was under £10,000 per year. The offer I accepted (1/3 of the assets) was the farmhouse plus the 8 acres around it. I don't think my MIL and FIL realised the problems this was to cause!!

Their legal advice was just chats with their friends at market plus lots of "it only seems fair that ....". Mine was with an expensive expert and my side won.

Interesting thread. Probably a slightly different scenario round here as the farmers are almost all tenants to a few large landowners. As such, there is less debate about inheritance, and often the job (usually held by the woman) outside the farm is the only thing keeping them afloat and therefore takes priority - so, for example, a lots of the farming fathers are the ones doing the school run because their wives have more rigid working hours. The full time farmers' wives (doing the paperwork, running the business, raising the family) seem to be mostly the older generation. Of course that doesn't seem to stop the (one of many, we are strange incomers and neither of us works in farming) at the fact that I not only work full time but also travel quite a lot for work - women might be the majority income earners, but they are still expected to be home for their DC every night .

My experiences with the "rural mafia" haven't been much fun.

The OP is right about cash v assets though. I got married to a farmer's son when I was 18 and he was given 1/3rd of his family farm as wedding "present". He then died (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome) and the 1/3rd was left to me. I wanted (needed) 1/3 of the assets but his folk offered me 1/3 of the farm income. This figure was complete fiction and was thanks to a tame accountant. It took ages for them to realise that a 1/3 share was 1/3 of the assets which was a totally different situation. Lots of nastiness followed.

"What I find interesting is it's almost exclusively the farm machinery which gets manified. "

I'd say there are two reasons for that over and above direct sexism (ie husband 'won't let' wife do it). The first is upbringing & experience - if you haven't grown up using machinery or in some other way gained that experience outside of work time then it is (a) daunting putting implements on, adjusting them correctly etc and (b) you will be slower and when there is time pressure then it won't make sense for you to do that job.

The second reason can be physical strength. I am pretty bloody fit (well not atm as have back injury, but usually), I work outdoors most of the time, and will happily shift muck, chop wood etc. BUT I am only 5', weigh 7 stone, and I really do struggle with shifting implements to get them in the right position, getting bolts undone etc. Its not like barrowing stuff where I can split things into smaller loads & just do more trips.

All that means that although in theory we split our work equally, in practice DH does 80% of machinery work, fencing, 'traditional' farm work while I do 80% of propagation, transplanting etc. Having said that I don't worry too much about it because if push came to shove & DH was out of action it would be easier to hire someone to do basic tractor work than to do skilled horticulture tasks.

I don't live in UK but live rural and here (SW France) there are certainly old fashioned sexists at large . Roles are split along traditional lines though even here I know of a woman rep, sole woman farmer, woman part of a couple who milk, and my good friend who stuffs ducks. What I find interesting is it's almost exclusively the farm machinery which gets manified. My friend is a great tractor driver and in extremis she will plough etc but ordinarily she won't - and even this year, when they were late sowing, three tractors hang around the yard because her husband wouldn't let her use one. Crazy. But in all the other tasks I can think of, including lumping hay and wood (though not cutting) and other pretty physical work, wives and husbands participate. It's just the wife then has to make coffee, the 3 course lunch on top every day which makes me angry to see. Then they moan at the dearth of young girls locally .

Young farmers are almost exclusively male and something I've noticed which makes me mad, is all the farm equipment is made for men. So gates are heavy and high up and bloody difficult as hell to open, buckets very wide...On the upside, inheritance is much better as, in Italy, property and land has to be split equally.

she wants to give it up so she can marry a farmer, do all the cooking, cleaning, childcare, accounts, etc as well as do her share of the milking and manual work on the farm

I don't understand this. I remember watching an episode of 'Wife Swap' where one of the families was a farming family and was rather horrified by the amount of work the husband had to do each day.

Is there some kind of status to being a 'farmer's wife' in a rural area?

It always makes me chuckle when reps am for my dad and get faced with smiley me instead!