Draft:The social history of wills
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The Social History of Wills includes all aspects of the history of will-making, but with more emphasis on the social side and less on the legal side.
Peculiarly, this area of study does not have a name.
The social history of wills is a complex topic that includes the origins of wills, how they changed over time, and how they were used to reflect social and economic conditions. They are particularly revealing about the nature of family relations and attitudes to inequality and inheritance.
Origins
The concept of wills originated in Roman times and was brought to Britain during the Roman occupation.
Anglo-Saxon era
In early England, wills were informal and oral, and land was often passed down through customary rules.
Norman Conquest
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the legal system changed, and feudalism became prominent.
Statute of Wills
In 1540, the Statute of Wills established requirements for wills, including that they be written, signed by the testator, and witnessed by two people. This was a compromise between Henry VIII and the country's leaders, who were frustrated with royal control of land.
Wills and social conditions
Wills reflect social and economic conditions. For example, some say that wills from around 1550 show disproportionate affection towards wives, and that by 1600 the ratio of sentiment scores for the adjective before wife and daughter was ten to one.
Women in wills
Women were rarely named in wills. For example, The Law's Disposal of a Person's Estate Who Dies with No Will or Testament (1787) notes the rarity of women being named in wills.
Writing wills
People who wrote their own wills were more likely to act as their own scribes or use professional advice. Some people dictated their wills to scribes before sending for witnesses.
One source is Dead Hands: A Social History of Wills, Trusts, and Inheritance Law by Lawrence M. Friedman.
As Friedmand states, wills and the law of succession rest on a single brute fact: you can't take it with you. The stock of wealth that turns over as people die is staggeringly large. In the United States alone, some $41 trillion will pass from the dead to the living in the first half of the 21st century. But the social impact of inheritance is more than a matter of money; it is also a matter of what money buys and brings about.
Law and custom allow people many ways to pass on their property. Friedman's social history reveals a decline in formal rules, the ascendancy of will substitutes over classic wills, social changes like the rise of the family of affection, changing ideas of acceptable heirs, and attempt to mitigate taxation and thus preserve intergenerational inequalities. Wills reflect changing values and priorities in families and society.