to make the division of land equal. Other laws suggested that the eldest son had automatic claims to the buildings. There are some hints that this only happened if a younger son challenged a division. The normal practice was that the eldest son both divided and chose first, but had to divide equally. More rarely, a father might divide the land for his sons in his lifetime. While a daughter with brothers did not normally receive a portion of the inheritance in land, she could inherit movable property. In a case where there are no sons, some of the law tracts allow the daughter to inherit a limited portion. Unless her husband was a foreigner to the and had no land of his own, the land did not descend to her sons but instead went to the other members of her agnatic kin group. There was apparently pressure for a woman with land to marry a relative to keep the land within the kin group. Finally, if a man died with no children, the property was distributed between his nearest kin—first the descendants of his father, and if there were no such descendants, then between the descendants of his grandfather, and so on. Any extra land that daughters could not inherit because of female inheritance limits also went to the wider kin. The head of a kin group was entitled to extra property since he was liable for debts a kinsman could not pay. Land rights of kin The potential for inheritance by even distant kin meant that, in Early Irish law, those kin all had some sort of right in the land. Land that had been inherited was known as (kin-land). Certain rights of use of land by the owner's kin seem to have existed. Moreover, it was possible that land could be redistributed if a certain branch of the family had few descendants and hence larger shares in the land per person. In such a case, even some more distant cousins could acquire the land, though they benefited less than closer kin. Apparently because of these potential claims it could apparently be difficult to alienate kin-land. Even when selling land that an individual had acquired separately from an inheritance, a portion went to his kin. Legal theory Changes in the legal system Ireland had no regular central authority capable of making new law and hence the Brehon laws