In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff takes both families' estates through a mortgage, a marriage and a dying boy's will, and a lawyer showed in 1926 the law holds up

Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, published on 24 November 1847 under the name Ellis Bell. In 1926 the barrister C. P. Sanger worked out its legal plot. Hindley Earnshaw inherits Wuthering Heights, drinks and gambles, and mortgages it "up to the hilt" to Heathcliff, the orphan his father brought home. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff is mortgagee in possession, and Hindley's son Hareton grows up as a servant who can read only his own name. Thrushcross Grange is entailed: old Mr Linton's will leaves it to his son Edgar for life and then to Edgar's sons. Heathcliff marries Edgar's sister Isabella; Sanger notes, "Whatever Isabella had Heathcliff got by marrying her." Their son Linton is sickly. Edgar's daughter Catherine is married to Linton. When Edgar dies, Linton, a minor, holds the Grange but cannot break the entail. Before 1838 a minor could leave personal property by will, and Linton leaves his to his father. Heathcliff ends up holding the personal property of both families and the Grange, which Sanger says he held "wrongfully." Heathcliff stops eating and dies with no relatives. Sanger concludes that Catherine would be entitled to the Grange and Hareton to the Heights. The novel ends with the two planning to marry.