The estate of the novel: Inheritance in Victorian fiction

What would a Victorian novel be without the inevitable dispute about a legacy?, and George Eliot's Middlemarch has not one but two (entwined) disputes. The more unusual one involves Casaubon's horrific bequest in which he orders that his widow, Dorothea, will forfeit her estate if she marries his cousin Ladislaw. How this could be enforced is never exactly clear, but imaging that it would or could puts the two of them into a real moral dilemma: first, it implies that they already have a passionate relationship, which they do not; second, it makes it seem as if Ladislaw, if he were interested in D., which he would have been, is pursuing her because she is wealthy. D. believes that, marriage aside, she should share the estate with L., who was deprived unfairly by Casaubon because his mother married out of the class (an itinerant Polish intellectual). Of course they could both just say the hell with it, we're in love, and we can live without this bequest - although D. does want to use the funds to bring about social improvement. The second dispute is a bit more Dickensian: we learn rather late in the novel that the evil banker, Bulstrode, has apparently deprived Ladislaw of a rightful inheritance by telling his aunt (?) that the long-lost nephew, L., could not be located and was most likely deceased; Bulstrode knew that was a lie and married the aunt and later inherited all of her (rightfully, L's) money. He confesses to L and offers him what is probably only a minuscule share of the forture; L., always a man of principle, declines the offer as morally debasing. So he has no fortune, no home, few prospects, and, seemingly, no chance to win Dorothea, who will not marry him and forfeit her opportunity to use her money for the benefit of others. We'll see how long her resolve - or his - can hold.