What We Know about the Gendered Dimensions of Inheritance: Sociological Food for Legal Thoughts.

Inheritance is an extremely important personal, familial, social and legal phenomenon. The centrality of inheritance to wealth distribution and to family relations yields enormous importance to the investigation of its gendered dimensions. Surprisingly, the investigation of these damnations has received scan empirical and legal attention. In this paper I aim at exciting both the sociological and the legal scholastic and activist interests in the gendered dimensions of inheritance by providing a state-of-the-art review of the available empirical data on these dimensions in different parts of the world. This review will also include my own first published findings on the gendered dimensions of inheritance in Israel, based on the analysis of 750 inheritance procedures and in-depth interviews with lawyers who specialize in inheritance law and with people who were involved in inheritance disputes. The paper will discuss women as legators, including what we empirically know about the gendered dimensions of intestate succession as well as of will writing and content. It will also discuss women as heirs by exploring the available empirical data on the existence of gender discrimination between spouses and siblings, on gendered practices of concessions and use of inherited shares, and on the gendered dimensions of inheritance conflicts. Finally, the paper will point to the lacunas in our knowledge of the gendered dimensions of inheritance and will provide preliminary insights on the relevancy of the sociological available data to inheritance law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript