What does "the balance of the estate having gone to his mother" mean?

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He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, THE BALANCE OF THE ESTATE HAVING GONE TO HIS MOTHER, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.