Ask HN: Do you think inheritance should be illegal?

In English history, the ages-ago method of bequeathing one's estate consisted of the "fee-tail" system - that is, property was passed (or "entailed") by lineal descent in a way that allowed the testator to control it for generations to come (for example, "I bequeath Blackacre to the eldest surviving male from x line, provided that he does not marry a non-Aryan wife and, if he does, then to the next male heir in succession and, should so-and-so (or anyone in his line) die without male issue, then Blackacre shall revert to the oldest surviving male in y line.") This is the world of Pride and Prejudice.

Now that was a system that cried out for reform and it was reformed, in time, to the point where legislatures abolished the fee-tail system in favor of a "fee simple" system - meaning that, once property was transferred, the transferee had the full bundle of rights relating to its disposition, including the power to alienate it during that person's lifetime and the power generally to bequeath it to whomever that person desired.

In the midst of this, the law injected value judgments of varying types, one of which was to favor children, meaning that if someone died intestate (without a will), the law set up default categories by which the decedent's property would pass, and this routinely favored spouse first and then direct lineal descendants, i.e., children. Indeed, even if a testator (person with a will) intended to disinherit children, he had to follow prescribed forms for doing so or the law would presume that he intended to leave appropriate shares to all children.

This is the legacy we have in the United States from the English common law tradition. It is based fundamentally on the idea of private property and on laws promoting what we today call the "nuclear family." And this is, by and large, the way the law has continued to this day, though the idea of "family" has broadened somewhat.

In theory, none of this needs to be as it is. If the state reigned supreme in people's lives, and if private property were regarded as an evil, then confiscatory policies could be enacted as desired. Of course, if one's estate were to be routinely confiscated upon one's death, then the equivalent of the modern "gift tax" proscription would also need to be in place, preventing a living person from making inter vivos transfers to his children as a way of circumventing the ultimate confiscation that society deemed to be fair. This would mean that the idea of "private property" would become largely illusory. No one would own property as such. Rather, each person would have a lease of sorts on property during one's lifetime, with a reversionary interest held by the government.

Since such a system would ultimately lead to widespread government confiscation, it would not long leave us with a free society but rather one in which we each would be required to seek permission from the sovereign state to use "its" resources as its bureaucrats and regulators deemed just.

The modern estate tax doesn't do this because, even while it seeks to promote the idea of busting up large estates at a person's death in the name of fairness, it comes nowhere close to doing this. The vast majority of average middle class people have always fallen under the minimum threshold such that the tax has not applied to them and, if it has, it has applied in a comparatively innocuous way - that is, it has imposed a tax on some portion of the estate such that the heirs still retained the larger portion. For extremely wealthy people, a system of foundations has been established by which the heirs can effectively control the family fortune even as it bypasses the normal estate-tax mechanism.

Thus, the question becomes, is the fee-simple form of property ownership, with its system of vesting the full powers of ownership and disposition in the hands of private individuals largely free from the authority of the state, a system in need of reform in the same way that, say, the old fee-tail system cried out for reform?

This is ultimately a question of the values a society seeks to reflect, with a state-run society of individuals largely beholden to the government for major elements of their subsistence versus a society grounded in individual rights, as best summed up in the Declaration of Independence, who are free to engage in "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" free of the influence of the state. "Fairness" in this context in a purely subjective term rooted in one set of values or the other.

It took centuries to move from a system of medieval serfdom to a system of fee-tail to a private property system of fee-simple ownership. I doubt that we would want to throw the modern system of property ownership away without some pretty careful thought and not without careful consideration of what has happened (or one might say the horrors of what has happened) in societies that do not respect private property ownership.

Given all the discussions here recently about the unintended side-effects of changing incentive structures, it's worth bearing in mind that providing for one's children (including after one's own death) is an important—perhaps the important—incentive to attain material wealth. Take it away and you may find you have taken away much of the reason people work in the first place.

I was all set for an interesting discussion on inheritance vs composition in OO design, and instead I got this?

Ah well, I'll answer the question posed. To me the only reason to reward different people differently is to create incentives to motivate people to produce more. Inheriting great wealth takes people who likely have the ability to produce and robs them of the incentive. Therefore I find myself in complete agreement with Warren Buffett that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.

1. Why would you say it is 'unfair' of me to be able to decide who gets the benefit of my lifes work when I pass on?

That's the rational. I earned it, so I decide who gets it. Usually my kids. YMMV from country to country, and state to state yadda.

2. Why not mind your own business. I worked for it, and I'll decide what to do with it. If you'd like to decide the fate of vast wealth, than go earn vast wealth.

3. You could even have a system that prevents people from whinging about how unfair life is on the internet whilst some people don't even have benefit of a decent soapbox, but it wouldn't make much sense either.

"in the interest of fairness."

How exactly is "fairness" defined? I see that word used in discussions of social matters ("fair-trade coffee", "fair wages", "fair share of taxes") and it's assumed that everyone is just going to have the same idea of "fair" (or not bothering analyzing what the word is supposed to mean in the given context), and think, hey, *fair", who could be against that? People use it, but no one defines it.

It's like asking someone if they like good food or good movies without making clear whose taste is deciding things.

The only interesting argument I've seen that argued against inheritance asserted that once a person was dead they were no longer able to make any claim on the money, nor was there any person from whom that money could be taken; there's no owner; they simply not exist. Decisions made about property while still alive had no bearing; when you're dead, you're out of the picture. (It seems to avoid the whole issue of "fairness", too.)

What wasn't explained to me was how one goes from that idea to it being OK then for the State to come and just take the wealth left behind.

Who chooses the charity? Inheritance is just one subset of the what happens to my money when I die? question. Maybe I'd like to give it to a charity, maybe my children. Do I have that right or should some of it be confiscated and used for something I likely wouldn't approve of explicitly? If so, how much?

We've just chosen the default case to be one's surviving relatives, in order of closeness, if a will doesn't specify otherwise.

Perhaps we should just change the default? Or raise the taxes? Making "inheritance illegal" doesn't really have a practical meaning.

What exactly is the rationale behind such an unfair concept?

What's unfair about it?

Should giving gifts be illegal?

> What exactly is the rationale behind such an unfair concept?

What's the difference (in real terms) between giving a gift before you die and giving a gift after you die?

> ...limits how much money parents can give to their children

Why are you singling out parents giving money to their children? If we want the freedom to give gifts to whoever we please, we also must accept that most people will want to give gifts to their children.

There is also the obvious evolutionary benefit if you consider the "selfish gene" (Dawkins).

It's not unfair to give an inheritance to your children; it's unfair not to. But I can't make everyone else do what I think is right.

My SO has serious medical problems. Shouldnt I be able to leave her the house and some means of support. Most inheritances are fairly modest. Taking them away would only hurt the majority with little benefit to anyone.

Question 1: Is it your money, or the state's?

Question 2: Do you like the ideas of the family farm and family small business?

Question 3: What about life insurance for families?

I thought this was a question about programming.

And yes, I think inheritance in programming should be illegal.

Here are a few reasons I disagree with you. Let me know what you think.

1) The point of gathering wealth is to somehow make yourself happier. Without this, wealth is meaningless. One of the things that make many parents happy is the knowledge that their kids will be well off. If you take that away, you are removing one method of achieving happiness through wealth.

Now, as a society, we do eliminate methods of gaining happiness through wealth. E.g. we don't allow you (legally anyway) to use your money to hire an assassin. There are other, less glamorous limits as well, such as limits on what you can buy in the stock market, etc... Each of these limits has a reason (or should anyway, if it doesn't, we should get rid of the limit) that relates to harming society. You seem to be saying that the money could be better used in other ways by the government. Although I question if the current incarnation of government would do so (in any country) I'll grant the premise for now, but still disagree.

I disagree because not only is making one's kids well off one way to gain happiness through wealth, it is a hugely significant way for many parents. If you want to change the inheritance laws, society needs to weaken the connection between parents and children, something which I don't believe would be a good thing.

2) You seem to think of inheritance as money. Its not just money. Inheritance is also property and rights (and other things? I'm not sure). With your system, after a few generations the government would own everything. Sure, we could find a way to have the government disperse these properties and rights, but this would be a very cumbersome system that would need to be frequently implemented and its unlikely to produce fair results. For example, lets say we do an auction when each person dies. How would people place bids? How can we make sure everyone is allowed to place bids? How can we make sure the rich don't use this to pick up things at way under market/reasonable value because they happen to be awake during the bidding process? Etc... You can probably create a system that solves the questions I asked, but it would be cumbersome and difficult to manage.

The problem is even worse with rights. Lets say I own some long term debt... i.e. I have the legal right to receive cash from a someone periodically over the next 20 (say) years. Now, if I die... who gets the rights to that cash? You want to auction that off as well? Who even knows I have that right? I may have it written down, but it may just be an informal contract with someone. This can be a problem even now, but with wills, people will want to write it down for the sake of their children.

3) In reality, I don't accept your premise that a governing body would do a better job with the inheritance. We see now that so many government programs are a waste (even though many are a success. I'm not being anti-government here). Do we really want to trust some body to use this money? This leaves so much room for error. Also, there are individual/family needs that won't be taken into account. The sick significant other is a big one (mentioned by @russell) and I'm sure there are more.

4) Think of how weird the situation is. Say you save up for your kid to go to private school or college. If you stay alive during that period your kid gets through it without debt. But, if someone hits you with a car, suddenly your kid will need to get loans? That doesn't make any sense. To reconcile this, either you need to do what you said and limit what kids can get while the parents are alive, or allow inheritance.

Lets say we go with option 1 (limiting what kids can get while alive) and say the private school is a religious school. Now, the parents are sending their kids there because they want to instill certain values. So now, we are limiting the parents rights to instill these values? This is not something that should happen in a free society.

Just some thoughts...

If you don't like capitalism, move somewhere that doesn't use it as their economical system so life can be more "fair". You might not like that kids get their parent's wealth without technically earning it, but that's the nature of the game. Want the same wealth? Go earn it. That's the beauty of capitalism. The same reason that wealth was created in the first place is why you can also get it.