Inheritance Matters

Suzanne Lenon is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Daniel Monk is Professor of Law and Assistant Dean at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

1. Introduction: Why Inheritance? Daniel Monk ( University of London, UK) and Suzanne Lenon (University of Lethbridge, Canada)

Part One: Foregrounding Inequalities – Past and Present
2. Defining Family Trees and Building Family Fortunes: A Look into Dispossession and Enrichment Through Inheritance Laws, Allison Tait (University of Richmond, UK)
3. ‘My Reputed Children’: Legacies of Enslavement in Atlantic-Island Wills, Anne Bottomley (Kent Law School, UK)
4. ‘Charitable Inclinations’: Women’s Bequests to Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, Máiréad Enright (Birmingham Law School, UK)

Part Two: Legal Fiction and Wills in Fiction
5. Surnames and Inheritance: Will-Plotting and Female Economic Power in the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Jolene Zigarovich (University of Northern Iowa, USA)
6. Murder, Inheritance and Family Provision in the Golden Age of English Detective Fiction, Rebecca Probert (Exeter University, UK)

Part Three: Resistance, Rights and Agency
7. The Story of the Pink Cat: An Exploration of the Ways Care-Experienced People Navigate Inheritance, Delyth Edwards (University of Leeds, UK) and Rosie Canning (University of Southampton, UK)
8. Queer Property, Russell Perkins (Artist, USA)
9. Sentimental Value: Keeping Inheritance in the Family, Sarah Gilmartin (Lancaster University, UK) and Anita Purewal (Lancaster University, UK)

Part Four: Adjudicating Inheritance/Adjudicating ‘Family’
10. How Social Norms and Values Influence the Balance between Wills Variation Claimants and Testators, Allison A Cartier (Juris Doctor, Canada)
11. Testamentary Freedom in Debate: The Prerequisite of the Notary to Pass Down and to Inherit, Corinne Delmas (Université Gustave Eiffel, France)
12. Children in Need and the Great Intergenerational Wealth Transfer: Squaring the Impossible Circle of Testamentary Freedom, Family Obligations and the Role of the State, Heather Conway (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) and Sheena Grattan (TEP, UK)

Part Five: Looking Backwards into the Future
13. The Power of Blood: How Succession Law’s Reliance on DNA Reinvigorates White Supremacy and the Politics of Biological Privilege, Danaya C Wright (University of Florida, USA)
14. Women, Property and Agency: Contours of Matrilineal Inheritance among the Nayars in Kerala, India, Lekha N B (Sree Narayana College, India) and Antony Palackal (University of Kerala, India)
15. Egalitarianism or Just a Need for Revenues? Debates on Inheritance Taxation in Scandinavia, Martin Dackling (Lund University, Sweden)
16. Émile Durkheim’s Proposal to Abolish Inheritance, Mélanie Plouviez (Côte d’Azur University, France)