One of the laws of the first king of Hungary, Stephen I, authorized each landowner to freely "divide his property, to assign it to his wife, his sons and daughters, his relatives or to the church" in the early 11th century.
[2] Historian Martyn Rady argues that "a peculiar reading" of the Lex Falcidia in the Codex Theodosianus gave most probably rise to the formation of the new legal doctrine.
[2] Rady also proposes that churchmen must have played a preeminent role in its development, because they could recall "fathers to their duties" and specify their obligations towards their children, although the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts in cases involving real estates was limited.
[6] The amount payable to the daughters was determined in accordance with a set of rules known as "commun estimation", which always gave a value lower than the market price.
[3] If a nobleman's male heirs could not pay off his daughter in moveables, they were entitled to compensate her in land, stipulating the right to redeem it at a prearranged price.