Septicia married an old man to spite her sons and left them nothing, and Augustus gave them her estate

Valerius Maximus, writing under the emperor Tiberius, collected Roman cases of wills that were overturned. One concerns Septicia, mother of the Trachali brothers of Ariminum. Angry with her sons, she married an old man named Publicius when she was past the age of bearing children, and she cut both sons out of her will. The sons appealed to Augustus. He condemned both the marriage and the will. He ordered that the sons should have their mother's estate, and he forbade the husband to keep her dowry, because the marriage had not been made to have children. Valerius records other cases from the same chapter. Augustus restored the inheritance of Gaius Tettius, disinherited by his father as an infant. The son of Marcus Anneius of Carseoli overturned his father's will before the centumviral court. A modern study traces the remedy for undutiful wills, the querela inofficiosi testamenti, to rhetorical argument in the late Republic. Valerius treats Septicia's case as a warning. The sons took their mother's estate, and Publicius lost the dowry.