“Fair Inheritance Project"

Co organizing with Ana Catarina Neves and Axel Gosseries

Online through MS TEAMS -Please use this link to access the event

4PM: The right to inherit as compensation for elderly caregiving tasks
Alejandro BERROTARAN (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba)

4H35pm: Care Workers and the promise of inheritance
Catarina NEVES (CEPS, University of Minho)

5H05PM: Inheritance as a risk to family relational goods: which policy?
Marie BASTIN (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

The right to inherit as compensation for elderly caregiving tasks
Alejandro BERROTARAN, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

An increasing number of older adults require assistance to carry out their daily activities. This demand for caregiving services is mainly met by family members, mostly women, who perform these tasks without receiving any compensation for it. In this presentation, I will analyze the possibility of recognizing a right to inherit by children who provide care to their elderly parents as a mechanism of compensation for the tasks performed. This compensatory right to inherit will be subjected to three critiques. The first critique states that children have a duty to care for their parents. If providing care is a family obligation, it cannot be the source of a compensation. The second critique states that recognizing a right to inherit for family care tasks violates state neutrality because it implies assuming a comprehensive conception of the family and applying it to society. The third critique points out that the state is the main responsible for financing the care of the elders, so compensation for the performance of these tasks is not the elder's responsibility. In addressing each of these critiques I will present objections that can be made to them. Finally, I will conclude that a right to inherit can be conceived as a mechanism of compensation for care tasks under non-ideal conditions.

Care Workers and the Promise of Inheritance
Catarina NEVES, CEPS - University of Minho

Hendrik Hartog describes a case of a housekeeper that was promised by her employer that she would receive one of his three farms if she would remain working for him. She took care of the old man between 1876-1901, despite earning little. In In the end, however, that promise was not fulfilled, and instead his family was granted the three farms (Hartog, 2012: 102). In another instance, Lourdes Maria Cambra, a domestic worker, who worked for the first woman elected official in Brazil was publicly shamed after claiming that she was promised the possibility to live in her former employer’s house (Schpum, 2004). Both examples illustrate claims from paid care workers to receive an inheritance or to be entitled to gifts they might have received from their employers. These are usually women, who are paid very little, and perform challenging emotional and physical work.

Despite what seem instances of gift-giving, or plausible claims for compensation, both judicial courts (Hacker, 2022; Regev-Mesalem, 2020) and public opinion tend to reject paid care workers’ rights to inheritance. In what follows, I intend to explore this debate, by first discussing what I believe are the three normative arguments behind those who oppose care workers’ right to inheritance: 1) the possibility of corrupted motivations; 2) the idea that family needs to take precedence; and finally that 3) no double compensation should occur. I will proceed to explain each argument and offer objections which I believe strengthen the claim of care-workers to have a right to inheritance.

Inheritance as a risk to family relational goods: which policy?
Marie BASTIN, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

The purpose of my reasoning is to turn a family-oriented argument against inheritance taxation on its head. I begin by presenting a conception of what makes the family valuable that is useful for normative thinking about inheritance using the concept of relational goods (Gheaus 2018). I then characterize the link between inheritance and family value as a risk: inheritance is not necessary for the realization of family relational goods, but it can easily be the means of relational harms. I then compare two types of inheritance policies that can address this risk: control of inheritance and inheritance taxation. I will argue that there is a strong case for inheritance taxation to address the risk that inheritance poses to family relational goods. The main argument for this is the idea that inheritance transmissions have unfair relational consequences, according to a sense of relational equality (Anderson 1999), which concern both social relations in general and inter-individual relations within the family.

De récents travaux d’économistes font état d’un « retour de l’héritage » : la part du patrimoine hérité dans les richesses détenues par les membres des démocraties occidentales a retrouvé un niveau comparable à celui du 19ème siècle, favorisé par une baisse de la fiscalité successorale dans ces pays (voir T. Piketty, Le capital au 21e siècle, 2015). Si l’on adopte une perspective de justice sociale selon laquelle personne ne devrait être « avantagé ou désavantagé par l’intervention du hasard de la nature ou des circonstances sociales » (John Rawls, Théorie de la justice, §4), le fait que l’héritage soit une source de richesse attachée au hasard de la naissance et qu’il soit très inégalitairement réparti semble profondément injuste. Pourtant l’impôt successoral reste très impopulaire, et ce dans tous les milieux sociaux. La défense de l’héritage prend appui sur un attachement à la liberté de transmettre ses biens, notamment lorsqu’il s’agit de favoriser ses enfants.
L’hypothèse de travail du colloque est qu’une analyse du sens et de la fonction du lien familial dans les réflexions normatives sur l’héritage est nécessaire pour éclairer et tenter de résoudre les dilemmes normatifs posés par l’héritage et sa taxation. Si l’on envisage la famille comme le lieu de comportements vertueux tels que l’altruisme ou l’amour, et si l’on considère que l’héritage est un moyen d’encourager ces comportements, alors on comprend comment la défense de l’héritage (et de sa non-taxation) peut se revendiquer d’une défense de la famille. Mais si la famille est considérée comme ce qui limite l’égalité des chances (au sens large) alors une forte limitation des héritages semble justifiée pour éviter la reproduction intergénérationnelle des inégalités socio-économiques. L’égalité des chances et la promotion de la famille sont-elles donc incompatibles, et le débat sur l’héritage est-il seulement un symptôme de cette tension ? Ou pouvons-nous la dépasser ?
Le colloque a pour objet de contribuer à ouvrir de nouvelles pistes, tant conceptuelles que normatives, sur ce débat ancien, et ce à la lumière des développements récents en la matière. Pour ce faire, le workshop se veut interdisciplinaire, en cherchant à favoriser un dialogue entre philosophie politique et morale normative, et sciences sociales, historiques, économiques et juridiques.

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Programme

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Programme : 

13h30-14h20: Mélanie Plouviez & Marie Bastin, "The Rignano principle in inheritance taxation: Philosophical arguments and contemporary uses"
Resp: Guido Erreygers

14h20-15h10: Alejandro Berrotaran, Is the right to bequeath a basic liberty?
Resp: Leonardo Menezes

15h10-15h30: Break

15h30-16h20: Antoine Germain, Economic theories of bequests taxation and fairness
Resp: Manuel Valente

16h20-17h10: Paolo Silvestri, "The gift of Inheritance. Ideas from the Percentage Tax Designation Institutions"
Resp: Axel Gosseries

Participer à la réunion Zoom

https://zoom.us/j/98480792309?pwd=akQrWVo2OTV4cE5ycXFvZFRMNUpsdz09

ID de réunion : 984 8079 2309
Code secret : 480487

14h00-14h45: Marion Leturcq, "Gender wealth inequality and inheritance"
Resp: Marie Bastin

14h45-15h30: André Masson, "Dear Inheritance"
Resp: Paolo Silvestri

15h30-15h45: Break

15h45-16h30: Åsbjørn Melkevik, "A Marginal Though Radical View on Inheritance"
Resp: Mélanie Plouviez

16h30-17h15: Eric Fabri, "From self-ownership to free transfers: the missing link"
Resp: Catarina Neves