Joanna L. Grossman and Lawrence M. Friedman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149820
- eISBN:
- 9781400839773
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149820.003.0012
- Subject:
- Law, Family Law
This chapter deals with the complexities of succession, specifically in the ways money is shared with other members of the family. Family members not only earn money from work; some family members ...
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This chapter deals with the complexities of succession, specifically in the ways money is shared with other members of the family. Family members not only earn money from work; some family members also inherit money from dead relatives, or get gifts from living ones. Other members give money away, during their lifetimes, or after death. Parents obviously have to pay for everything their children need, and grown children sometimes support old, sick, and destitute parents. When a family member dies, typically they leave whatever money or assets remain to members of the family. And while books, law school curricula, and legal practice treat family law and the law of succession as entirely different subjects, this chapter deals away with those distinctions in order to reveal how these subjects impact family life and family law.Less
This chapter deals with the complexities of succession, specifically in the ways money is shared with other members of the family. Family members not only earn money from work; some family members also inherit money from dead relatives, or get gifts from living ones. Other members give money away, during their lifetimes, or after death. Parents obviously have to pay for everything their children need, and grown children sometimes support old, sick, and destitute parents. When a family member dies, typically they leave whatever money or assets remain to members of the family. And while books, law school curricula, and legal practice treat family law and the law of succession as entirely different subjects, this chapter deals away with those distinctions in order to reveal how these subjects impact family life and family law.
Amy Ziettlow and Naomi Cahn
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190261092
- eISBN:
- 9780190666590
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190261092.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing, Marriage and the Family
Homeward Bound shows that as family structure becomes more complex, so too does elder care. Existing institutions and legal approaches are not prepared to handle those complexities. As 79 million ...
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Homeward Bound shows that as family structure becomes more complex, so too does elder care. Existing institutions and legal approaches are not prepared to handle those complexities. As 79 million American Baby Boomers grow older, their diverse family structures mean the burden of care will fall on a different cast of family members than in the past. Our current approaches to elder care are based on an outdated caregiving model that presumes life-long connection between the parents and offspring, with the existence of high internal norm cohesion among family members providing a valuable safety net for caregiving, Single parent and remarried parent families are far more complicated, and point to the need for increased formal support from the religious, medical, legal, and public policy communities. We base our analysis on in-depth, qualitative interviews with surviving grown children and stepchildren whose mother, father, stepparent, or ex-stepparent died. Their stories illustrate the profound ways that the caregiving, mourning, and inheritance process has changed in ways not adequately reflected in formal legal, medical, and religious tools. The solutions center on awareness and preparation: providing more support for individual planning for incapacity and death and, even more importantly, creating legal, political, and social planning for the “graying of America” at a time of increasingly complex familial ties.Less
Homeward Bound shows that as family structure becomes more complex, so too does elder care. Existing institutions and legal approaches are not prepared to handle those complexities. As 79 million American Baby Boomers grow older, their diverse family structures mean the burden of care will fall on a different cast of family members than in the past. Our current approaches to elder care are based on an outdated caregiving model that presumes life-long connection between the parents and offspring, with the existence of high internal norm cohesion among family members providing a valuable safety net for caregiving, Single parent and remarried parent families are far more complicated, and point to the need for increased formal support from the religious, medical, legal, and public policy communities. We base our analysis on in-depth, qualitative interviews with surviving grown children and stepchildren whose mother, father, stepparent, or ex-stepparent died. Their stories illustrate the profound ways that the caregiving, mourning, and inheritance process has changed in ways not adequately reflected in formal legal, medical, and religious tools. The solutions center on awareness and preparation: providing more support for individual planning for incapacity and death and, even more importantly, creating legal, political, and social planning for the “graying of America” at a time of increasingly complex familial ties.
