Güitsetgegch

Template:Region icon Kylaris A Güitsetgegch or Prabandhaka is an official within the international Badi movement who oversees the dissolution of the estate of a deceased person.

Overview

A Güitsetgegch must be appointed publically by an individual before their death and is typically a close friend rather than a relative. Once the appointer dies, the Güitsetgegch organizes the funeral and then dissolves the deceased's estate. Dispensation of assets, applicable offices, and memorabilia are entirely left to the personal discretion of the Güitsetgegch, with a few regulated exceptions (surviving spouses cannot be rendered homeless, for example). Occassionally the deceased may leave written or verbal instructions, but this is not considered legally binding and the Güitsetgegch is free to ignore those wishes. Although there are no limitations on the Güitsetgegch's control over inheritance gifts, commonly cited reasons to disregard the deceased wishes are behavior towards the deceased when they are ailing or not appearing at a funeral. After all gifts have been made, the Güitsetgegch takes the remainder as a fee and the affair is considered complete.

In cases where the affairs of the deceased may extend--for example maitenancing burial plots--the person who previously served as Güitsetgegch will often share in the responsibility.

Compensation

Most estates are largely inherited by spouses, siblings, children and other close relatives, but a Güitsetgegch may also pay themselves a fee or take whatever they may want from the estate. Since the Güitsetgegch is most often a close personal friend, gifts to the self are often memorabilia or a small fee. Although the powers of the Güitsetgegch are generally not limited by regulation, a share of a large estate is typically set aside for the local religious community or other public institution, some territories legally limit the fee taken for the Güitsetgegch to the value of the donation.

In practice the donation parity means that a Güitsetgegch can keep, at most, half of the total estate if they donate the other half to a public cause. For this reason, appointing ones spouse or other primary inheritor as Güitsetgegch (or failing to appoint a Güitsetgegch at all) is considered cruel, since it will require the inheritor to give up half of the estate if they wish to keep a large part of it themselves.

History

Traditional Dezevauni family structures were often webs of related people and included many adoptions between members of the extended family group. Before the emergence of the Güitsetgegch figure, villages would often share the deceased's remaining food at a funeral feast and then the few permanent possessions would be split by the children, niblings, and younger cousins in order of relatedness. The process generally involved individuals simply entering the home of the deceased and taking an object or objects that seemed appropriate to them and the community. In the medieval period, however, larger communities made it difficult for possessions to be efficiently dispensed and further complications emerged from premarital assets that inlaws sometimes wanted returned in the case of a young person's death. Sometimes it was necessary for a few members of the family to remain at the house during the funerary feast to keep bad actors from robbing the inheritors of family heirlooms, these figures were known as Ngamui Gounau, or the "death gaurd". These early figures eventually began to manage the rest of the inheritance process by determining who could and could not enter the home of the deceased based on their recollection of friends and enemies in the local community.

During the Badi Reaction, the formalized office of Güitsetgegch was used by Steppe people to help maintain their new Badi temples in the same way that they were in Dezevau. It was more of a legal office since it did have the same cultural context as Dezevauni village life and typically concerned large numbers of livestock instead of small tools or jewelry. Güitsetgegchs on the steppe also helped bridge distances since they hold on to important gifts for months of years until the appropriate recipient was accessible. These were typically nicknamed "bastard gifts" since they were often given to illicit children within steppe society, a concept not important to the adoptive parenting styles in Dezevau.

Tsustemori Khan, founder of the Togoti Khaganate, required all of his subjects to name a Güitsetgegch, rejecting other inheritance traditions. This helped to fund his military campaigns, since Güitsetgegch were much more likely to give large gifts to the state than children or spouses. Tsustemori's own Güitsetgegch gave the entire city of Svaragni to the Stone Badi Cleric Saumi, but generally is credited with maintaining the empire through its transition to the next monarch through shrewdly diplomatic gifts.

Legacy

Güitsetgegch remains an extremely common form of estate settlement in Satria, the Great Steppe, and Southeast Coius. Colonial authorities were initially distrustful of the system, but many elderly adults, when advised to make a formal written will with a solictor, would only go so far as to name their desired Güitsetgegch. Even now, courts in Güitsetgegch-dominated regions seldom hear challenges to Güitsetgegch decisions and will often overturn a written will in favor of the Güitsetgegch's desires.