The gemarrah discusses a case where two daughters and a son survive the father. Daughter 1 gets married and receives 10% of the estate as a dowery. The son dies and it becomes time to divide the estate between the daughters. The gemarrah presents 2 possibilities:
1) they should "bring back the dowery" and divide up the complete estate, that is the current estate plus the dowery given to the daughter 1, 50-50.
2) divide just the current estate 50-50. In this choice daughter 2 ends up with 45% of the original estate and daughter 1 55%
I don't understand how the gemarrah can consider option 1 as viable. Based on the discussion on the previous daf, if the son had not died, when daughter 2 marries she gets 10% of the current estate. This is less than her sister got. That is because we use the value of the estate at the time she marries to determine the dowery. Therefore, it seems to me when the son dies the yerusha becomes the estate at the time he died. That daughter 1 happened to get married and this caused a "loss" to the value of the estate should not matter just like it did not matter in figuring daughter 2's dowery while the son was alive. In both cases daughter 2 ends up with less money than 1.
To put it another way, it is as if the case was a father and only 2 daughters. Daughter 1 marries in the lifetime of the father. The father dies and since there is no son, daughter 1's dowery would not be taken away from her, added to the total estate which would then be divided 50-50 between them. What is the distinction?
Martin Fogel, carlsbad, USA
In fact it is not true that according to (1) [i.e. Rabbi Chanina] they get 50-50. Rather R. Chanina maintains that daughter 2 gets 10%, but this means 10% of what remains after daughter 1 got her 10%, not 10% of the original estate. Therefore daughter 1 gets 10%, daughter 2 gets 9% and they divide equally the remaining 81%, so the final share of the estate is 50.5% for daughter 1 and 49.5% for daughter 2.
However (2) [i.e. Rabbi Yochanan] maintains that daughter 2 does not get her 10% at all. This is what he means by saying "Vitrah" (she forewent it) i.e. she lost the 10% entirely. This is because she did not get married in the son's lifetime so she only receives inheritance, not the 10% dowery. Therefore according to R. Yochanan daughter 1 gets 55% and daughter 2 gets 45% as you wrote.
KOL TUV
Dovid Bloom