My paper is based on the study of wills from one sijil in the Maronite Archbishopric of Beirut. The wills were drawn between 1880 and 1911. The goals of my paper are two-fold: first, I explore the role of the Maronite Archbishopric of Beirut within the wider web of Ottoman legal institutions in the age of legal reforms. Second, I conduct a close reading of the contents of the wills with a focus on property devolution practices. Because the wills are very rich in detail, they provide unique opportunities for analyzing the testators’ mental universes, and their gendered conception of their obligations toward family members. As will be shown in my paper, although bequeathable amounts were limited by the law to a third of one’s estate, wills were oftentimes used to fulfill a perceived obligation toward female family members who did not fall under the category of legal heirs under fara'id law.