The thing to recognise is that there was never a full allocation of the estate assets because 9/18 + 6/18 + 2/18 = 17/18 and of course you can't have fractions of a live horse. There wouldn't have been any problem if the old fella had 17 grams of gold to split up, 8.5g to the eldest, 5.666...g to the middle, 1.888...g to the youngest and 0.944...g to the lawyers to handle the challenge to the will by the 2 younger sons.
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