This article compares property transfer contracts between generations in two Prussian parishes where marital law differed significantly in the 19th century. Our sources focus on two critical phases in peasants' life cycles at the time. Whereas young people could find the resources to settle down, the older generation had to plan for their retirement. Although sons had a better chance of inheriting the farm, female successors were not rare. A peasant daughter's overall prospects of becoming a peasant by inheriting her parent's farm or marrying a farm successor were almost as good as her brother's. The situation for older women, however, was subject to their legal standing with regards to marital property. When couples held joint marital property, men and women had the same opportunities to arrange for retirement. In contrast, when couples held separate marital property and male succession prevailed, older women were at an evident disadvantage. D

In nineteenth-century Westphalia (northwestern Germany), the practice of impartible inheritance excluded the siblings of farm successors from access to their parents' land. Without a land market, the only way for children who did not inherit a farm to obtain landed property, as well as high social and economic status, was to marry the heir to someone else's farm. Social-network and regression analyses show that the attainment of status depended not only on the socioeconomic standing of young people's families of origin but also on their parents' social networks. The parents who were most successful at placing their children in desirable social stations were those who occupied central positions in the godparenting network.

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