조선시대 義母와 義子女 간의 상속 특징과 관련 분쟁 양상 - 1715년 회덕현 소송을 중심으로 - = Characteristics of Inheritance and Related Disputes between the Stepmother and the Stepchild in the Joseon Dynasty - Focusing on the 1715 Lawsuit of Hoedeokhyeon -

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examined the inheritance pattern of property between the stepmother and the stepchild during the Joseon Dynasty through a lawsuit in Hoedeok-hyeon in 1715. The cause of this lawsuit was duplicate sales. The plaintiff Jeong Yoon-bang bought a problematic land from a man named Park Sung-hwi. Park Sung-hwi was Kang Man-ha’s second son-in-law, and sold the share he inherited after his father-in-law's death to Jung Yoon-bang. However, Mr. Lee, Kang Man-ha's first wife, once sold the land to someone else. Jeong Yoon-bang judged that the incident was a conspiracy between Kang Oh-sang, Kang Man-ha's relative, and his first wife, Lee. Therefore, Kang Oh-sang was designated as the defendant and asked to appear in Songjeong(訟庭). In fact, the relationship between the Plaintiff and the Defendant was not related to each other. However, looking at the litigation process, it can be seen that it was a problem that occurred after receiving property among the family.
The conflict between the family begins with the fact that Kang Man-ha had three children with different mothers and died early as he went through the three marriages. Kang Man-ha had a daughter (Gocheon-hak’s wife) with his first wife Lee, a daughter (Park Sung-hwi’s wife) with his second wife Jeong, and a son Chun-hak with his third wife Yoo. Among them, Jeong, the second wife, and Yoo, the third wife, had already died before the lawsuit. The problem is that when Chunhak was in trouble for failing to pay Gunpo, his first wife, Lee, who was not related, sold the land inherited by her second daughter on the pretext of doing it for Chunhak. The quarrel between the step-child and the step-mother spread to other people, eventually leading to a lawsuit.
During the Joseon Dynasty, the stepmother's inheritance of property to her stepchild occurred in conjunction with the emotional part and the husband's will. For example, when the step-child took good care of the step-mother's illness or made certain contributions, the step-mother gave part of the property as a sign of sincerity. In particular, it has been a considerable number of cases are confirmed in which the economic difficulties faced by the child of a concubine if the property is distributed only to the legitimate child. In addition, there was no the legitimate child, so they gave it to the stepchild in the ancestral rites, and sometimes if it was a property jointly achieved with her husband during her lifetime, she handed over some of the property to her husband's descendants. As seen in the case of Lee in the lawsuit of Hoedeok-hyeon in 1715, it can be seen that the idea of caring for stepchild as an father's legal wife showed some universality.