Two sociologists and a lawyer examine here the attitudes of both survivors and attorney on various problems surrounding inheritance—from will-making through estate settlement. Within a legal frame of reference, this book is a study of what happens within a family at death—and why. The authors use the "inheritance unit" as the basis for looking at the functions of inheritance in intergenerational family continuity and the general patterns of family relationship.
A toxic will plays havoc in the lives of three generations of women when they discover they have been living a lie. A keenly observed story of the danger of secrets, the legacy of betrayal and the power of family from a bestselling Australian author. Sometimes an ending is really a beginning ... Felicity Lewis's fiftieth birthday party in her newly renovated home, loving husband and daughter Greta by her side, is going off with a bang when disaster strikes. Her father, Franklyn, with his usual impeccable timing, has keeled over and died. For some members of the family, his wife Hazel for example, Franklyn's death is not the great loss it first appears to be. But when his toxic and inexplicable will is read out, it becomes clear that long-buried secrets are about to surface, starting with the astonishing reappearance of Hazel's long-lost sister. Indeed, Franklyn's death sets in motion a chain of events that will cause three generations of Gifford family women to question everything they hold dear - their relationships, their loyalties, even their identities. Until, that is, they choose to fight back against their dark inheritance ... A clever, sympathetic and thought-provoking look at how a legacy of lies can seep through the generations and poison all it touches, and how the truth can set you free.
Yvonne Pitts explores nineteenth-century inheritance practices by focusing on testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills, claiming the testator lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. By anchoring the study in the history of local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that "capacity" was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values.
What is it that drives people to wage war against their own flesh and blood? Veteran estate planning and elder law attorney P. Mark Accettura sets out to answer this question as he provides a comprehensive list of steps will makers, lawyers, and advisors can take to preserve the most valuable legacy of all: the family itself. Accettura's conclusions are aided by five years of research in psychology, psychiatry, and gerontology. The author concludes that the fight for money and things is not about to object or the money itself, but about what they symbolize: importance, love, security, self-esteem, and immortality. Accettura contrasts famously toxic personages like Leona Helmsley and Sumner Redstone with conspicuously philanthropic testators such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Alfred Nobel. Using the case of philanthropist Brooke Astor as a guide, the author tracks the overlapping phenomena of dysfunctional families, progressive dementia, elder abuse, and probate litigation.
This gripping story of the doctors at the forefront of Alzheimer’s research and the courageous North Dakota family whose rare genetic code is helping to understand our most feared diseases is “excellent, accessible...A science text that reads like a mystery and treats its subjects with humanity and sympathy” (Library Journal, starred review). Every sixty-nine seconds, someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Of the top ten killers, it is the only disease for which there is no cure or treatment. For most people, there is nothing that they can do to fight back. But one family is doing all they can. The DeMoe family has the most devastating form of the disease that there is: early onset Alzheimer’s, an inherited genetic mutation that causes the disease in one hundred percent of cases, and has a fifty percent chance of being passed onto the next generation. Of the six DeMoe children whose father had it, five have inherited the gene; the sixth, daughter Karla, has inherited responsibility for all of them. But rather than give up in the face of such news, the DeMoes have agreed to spend their precious, abbreviated years as part of a worldwide study that could utterly change the landscape of Alzheimer’s research and offers the brightest hope for future treatments—and possibly a cure. Drawing from several years of in-depth research with this charming and upbeat family, journalist Niki Kapsambelis tells the story of Alzheimer’s through the humanizing lens of these ordinary people made extraordinary by both their terrible circumstances and their bravery. “A compelling narrative…and an educational and emotional chronicle” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), their tale is intertwined with the dramatic narrative history of the disease, the cutting-edge research that brings us ever closer to a possible cure, and the accounts of the extraordinary doctors spearheading these groundbreaking studies. From the oil fields of North Dakota to the jungles of Colombia, this inspiring race against time redefines courage in the face of this most pervasive and mysterious disease.
This pioneering book examines different aspects of the inheritance customs in rural Western Europe in the pre-industrial age: for families and whole societies, the roles of lawyers in reducing them to a common system, and the recurring debate on the merits of various inheritance customs in shaping particular kinds of society. At first sight the study of inheritance customs may appear to be a dull affair, concerned with outdated practices of hair-splitting lawyers; certainly, little academic interest has been shown in the subject. Yet inheritance customs are vital means for the reproduction of the social system, by the transmission of property and other rights through the family. Various family structures and social arrangements are linked by different means of inheritance. This book will interest a wide range of historians, students, postgraduates and teachers alike, whether they are concerned with social, economic, demographic or legal history, in the medieval, early modern or modern periods, and whether their interests are directed to England or other countries of Western Europe; it will also be valuable to social anthropologists, sociologists and historians of ideas. A comprehensive glossary of technical terms has been added for the non-specialist.
Over the past three decades, average household wealth in the United States has declined among all but the richest families, with a near 80 percent drop among the nation's poorest families. Although the national debate about inequality has focused on income, it is wealth—the private assets amassed and passed on within families—that provides the extra economic cushion needed to move beyond mere day-to-day survival. Assets for the Poor is the first full-scale investigation into the importance of family wealth and the need for policies to encourage asset-building among the poor. Assets for the Poor shows how institutional mechanisms designed to encourage acquisition of capital and property favor middle-class and high-income families. For example, the aggregate value of home mortgage tax deductions far outweighs the dollar amount of the subsidies provided by Section 8 rental vouchers and public housing. Banking definitions of creditworthiness largely exclude minorities, and welfare rules have made it nearly impossible for single mothers to accumulate savings, let alone stocks or real estate. Due to persistent residential segregation, even those minority families who do own homes are often denied equal access to better schools and public services. The research in this volume shows that the poor do make use of the assets they have. Cash gifts—although small in size—are frequent within families and often lead to such positive results as homebuying and debt reduction, while tangible assets such as tools and cars help increase employment prospects. Assets for the Poor examines policies such as Individual Development Account tax subsidies to reward financial savings among the poor, and more liberal credit rules to make borrowing easier and less costly. The contributors also offer thoughtful advice for bringing the poor into mainstream savings institutions and warn against developing asset building policies at the expense of existing safety net programs. Asset-building for low-income families is a powerful idea that offers hope to families searching for a way out of poverty. Assets for the Poor challenges current thinking regarding poverty reduction policies and proposes a major shift in the way we think about families and how they make a better life. A Volume in the Ford Foundation Series on Asset Building
This book breaks new ground by offering the first detailed and systematic analysis of inheritance practices in New York City from the beginning of Dutch settlement in the 1620s to the onset of the American Revolution. By analyzing a broad range of original sources--including more than 2,300 wills--David E. Narrett shows how the transmission of property at death reflected the distribution of power and authority within the family. The author makes an especially important contribution to early New York history by explaining the Dutch origins of social and family customs, and by tracing the persistence of Dutch ways following the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664. He demonstrates that seventeenth-century Dutch law was particularly favorable to women since it sanctioned community property within marriage, the drafting of mutual wills by spouses, and the equal (or nearly equal) division of property among all children. While the book maintains its comparative focus on the Dutch and English traditions, it also includes material on other ethnic groups (for example, French Huguenots and Jews) living in a pluralistic society. Narrett utilizes both Dutch and English language sources to examine such pertinent topics as the relationship between law and social custom, primogeniture, kinship and communal ties, charitable bequests, the manumission of slaves, and the literacy level of testators.Written in a clear and precise manner, the book includes many tables that will give readers immediate access to supporting data, and a conclusion establishes the relationship of Narrett's findings to relevant scholarship. A valuable addition to the literature on inheritance, this is a book whose conclusions and data will be mined by colonialists, legal historians, and historians of women and the family.
Through the prism of three working-class families, Samuel Freedman illuminates the political history of 20th-century America, commencing with the immigrant foundation that laid the foundation for FDR's New Deal, taking readers through the 1960's era of political activism and ending with today's conservatism.
