New trans law could let my girls inherit title, says Earl
WHEN Tory MP Justine Greening announced plans to allow people to choose their own sex without a doctor’s diagnosis, did the Women and Equalities Minister consider the potential effect on our upper classes?
For the British aristocracy relies on the tradition of male primogeniture, in which titles, as well as stately homes, are inherited by the eldest son.
And now a leading aristocrat, the Earl of Balfour, has suggested that one of his four daughters — Ladies Willa, Kinvara, Maria and Candida — might declare that she identifies herself as a man so she could become the next Earl when he dies.
‘As far as I can see, on the same day that I meet my maker one of my daughters could declare that there has always been a man screaming to get out of her female body,’ says Lord Balfour, who turns 69 next week.
‘She could thus claim my hereditary title as a son. How could present law be applied to argue with that, given the way this area is developing? And should that even be necessary in this day and age?’
As things stand, Lord Balfour’s title would go to his brother, if still alive, or his nephew. In 2013, the Earl wrote to Francis Maude, who was then Cabinet Office minister, asking for an end to male primogeniture. He now adds, in a letter to The Times: ‘Surely the time has come when we can nominate which child we want to be our successor, regardless of their current, past or future gender.’
The Earl’s wife, Lady Tessa Balfour, eldest child of the 17th Duke of Norfolk, could now be living at her family seat, Arundel Castle in Sussex if she’d inherited the dukedom instead of her younger brother.
Her second daughter Lady Kinvara has described male primogeniture as ‘archaic, mad, absolutely mad’.
She said: ‘I simply believe that property and land should stay together and that a home should go to one person — the eldest born.’
Perhaps it’s time she came out as a man?