Unnatural Wills: Estate Litigation and Inequality

• In Event: 50602 - Culture, Value(s), and Relationships in Economic Life

Abstract

Inheritance disputes are a canonical form of relational work mismatch. But relational work mismatches, and the complex ties between relational work and inequality, remain undertheorized. In this paper, I examine all known inheritance disputes in Dallas from 1895-1945 as a theory-building exercise. I show that disputes disproportionately emerged in non-normative configurations of intimate economic ties: queer testators seem to be vastly overrepresented in the collection of disputes. Courts tended to resolve disputes by reinscribing moralized distinctions between gendered, racialized, and classed social categories. Disputes over upper-class wills were much more likely to make it to multiple rounds of trial, and have been more frequently cited in court cases and legislation up to the present day. Overall, these inheritance disputes suggest that relational work mismatches have a multiplex relationship to inequality: they arise unequally, are settled unequally, and are unequal in their consequences.

Author

• Shay O'Brien, Massachusetts Institute of Technology