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Because Jarndyce v Jarndyce is a fictional lawsuit at the center of Charles Dickens’s 1853 novel Bleak House, there is no exact, official number of years given for its duration. Instead, Dickens frames it as an interminable, multi-generational nightmare that spans several decades.
To give you an idea of its timeline within the world of literature and its real-world inspirations:
In the novel: The case has been dragging on so long that it has outlived generations. As Dickens famously wrote, "Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it." It only ends when the entire estate is completely swallowed up by legal fees, leaving nothing left to fight over.
The real-world inspiration: Dickens based Jarndyce v Jarndyce on actual, notoriously slow English Court of Chancery cases. His primary inspiration is believed to be Jennens v Jennens, a real dispute over a vast inheritance that began in 1798. At the time Bleak House was published, that real-world case had already been active for 55 years. It was finally abandoned in 1915—after a mind-boggling 117 years—for the exact same reason as the fictional one: the entire estate had been completely drained by court costs.
So while the exact fictional lifespan of Jarndyce isn't pinned to a specific number, its real-life counterpart proved that Dickens’s satire was barely an exaggeration at all.