ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the questions surrounding the social and economic context, and ideas about care and relationships, into the often-overlooked issue of inheritance law. Given the recent reforms to this area of law with the Inheritance and Trustees' Powers Act 2014, and the increase in property ownership in the second half of the twentieth century, this is a key issue for socio-legal scholars and this chapter reviews relevant debates. It demonstrates that seeing will-making as a 'private' and 'responsible' act can individualise the process and implications. However, the chapter masks the important interactions between care, family, and the state, and the way in which testamentary freedom can reinforce the inequality and disadvantage that the wider socio-political context may foster. The issue of 'unworthy' or 'unnatural' wills highlights a debate about the extent to which the law should uphold testamentary wishes contrary to dominant moral values or understandings of 'responsible' behaviour. And gender has often been central to this debate.
