Should inheritance be banished?

But how would you stop the child being given the money by the parents? And what happens to the property when the parents die?

You've missed the point of this thread which was to explore what it might be like if those rights were different.

It would also be incredibly difficult to have the human right to own property removed - if you're whole premise is based on an unfeasible situation then it's hardly a debatable subject.

I was not talking about removing the right to own property but about the right to inherit it. The clue is in the title. I wish people would respond to what is written and not some imaginary argument in their head.

Idea came up in another thread. The logic being, if people had to earn their worth from society regardless of who their parents were, then people would cooperate together more and their greed would be more limited.

Ok we've had some people who say no. Can we have some people reply who are willing to explore the idea?

Within the right to own property is your right to do certain things with it, I would imagine the courts would infer a right to transfer ownership

Yes, I believe inheritance should be abolished. This is for a number of reasons:

1) it is fundamentally unfair that some can have significantly better lives as a result of the pure luck of their birth. This is a result of the basic notion of equality of opportunity, which is the essential underpinning of right-wing 'freedom to make the best of yourself' justifications. While we cannot prevent every cause of this easily (for instance, it is not easy to substantially level out the wealth of various parts of the world), abolishing inheritance to children from parents would be one of the things we could do easily (naturally, there are some changes to the laws on inter vivos gifts which would need to be made, but it is definitely possible).

2) while I can just about accept that people would be less motivated to work as hard in a state of equal pay (e.g. equality of outcome), I find it ludicrous to believe that people would be unmotivated to work if they couldn't pass on the benefits to their children, given they could enjoy the benefits themselves.

4) it encourages the accumulation of family wealth, which is often effectively removed from the economy for periods of time. This is a clear problem economically. That this is the case can be seen by the fact that we have a law against perpetual trusts.

5) on a related note to 1), while you could use the strained concept of desert to justify the acquisition of great amounts of wealth by hardworking individuals, it is impossible to transfer this desert to their children.

Those are problems, but they're not capable of being solved without causing significant harm to society.

Not true. I assume you're talking about A1P1, which provides that natural and legal persons are entitled to peaceful enjoyment of their possessions. Whose right are we breaching? The person, now dead, who is incapable of ownership? Clearly the deceased is outside the scope of A1P1. The person who would be entitled to the property under the deceased's will? The interest in the property doesn't pass to them until well after death, so it's not 'their' possessions in question. The right is not engaged.

This would actually be a significantly better result than property passing to children. It keeps money moving around the economy. Either way, I don't think people are capable of planning this well enough to have that effect due to the uncertainty of death.

The policy behind perpetuity rules is to prevent money and assets being locked up in 'family trusts' - i.e. to prevent families taking a significant amount of useful material out of the economy. This is exactly what happens when the rich inherit.

This is baseless assertion. I'm asking you to justify why hard work gives rise to a) any desert of anything, and b) the desert specifically to have free usage of property. There is no moral principle that work should be rewarded (though having such a rule in practice may be instrumentally useful for economic stimulation etc).

1) most family homes are co-owned now; 2) any given scheme could provide for this, even by allowing a certain amount of inheritance for those who were dependent upon the deceased.

I also support the removal of catchment areas for schools (and, for what it's worth, the removal of private schools).



Not really. Let's look at what happens at the moment. If someone dies intestate with no heirs, the property passes to the Crown as bona vacantia. It is also the case that public policy excludes certain classes from inheriting (e.g. those who killed the deceased). All I'm suggesting is that the class who are excluded be extended to all persons. Furthermore, the transfer of property by will isn't really assignment.

You might have an argument as regards the measures restricting transfers inter vivos that would need to be implemented for this to work, but first, it should be noted that inheritance tax is already payable on certain gifts made during one's lifetime, even outside the seven-year threshold. There is no rational distinction in terms of the effect on your right to assign between charging n% tax and 100% tax where n<100. I'm also not certain that the right to assign is necessary for A1P1 to be satisfied. Admittedly, I haven't (and don't have time to) look in it in any great depth, but it's definitely possible to imagine a legal system with hard limits on assignment which still allowed personal enjoyment of property.



This is true, but it would still be significantly less certain than passing it down to legatees, and I maintain this is a better situation than their money being inherited.



This is exactly what a limit on inheritance does.



I'm treating this and the next point separately as they are logically distinct. First, you've missed the point here, I'm asking you to explain why this reward must/should exist outside of instrumental justifications (i.e. considerations of motivation to work). Secondly, I don't see any reason why the content of the reward has to be monetary compensation. Thirdly, why does the idea of ownership of property necessarily have to include a right to assignment, especially assignment for no valuable consideration?



By using property in any way which involves a net social opportunity cost, you are harming people with your use of property.



This is a drafting problem. I don't see an easy way around a legislated-for hard limit on inflation-adjusted inheritance of £x, with a register kept of all inheritances. It's not a loophole so much as an exception.

To be honest I'm quite bored of this debate; equity has always been a topic I've found particularly dry. The simple fact is you cannot remove a persons right to transfer the ownership of their property on a moral level because that will be implying that you merely have a long lease on property you buy. Even if it were morally acceptable it's not legally feasible, any law you could pass would have to allow for loopholes so that poorer people where not prevented from keeping property and those loopholes would be exploited by the countries top solicitors as all loopholes are. Secondly to that you would likely have a lot of trouble with the CJEU

Rights do not exist outside the law. As for the legal feasibility point, it can be effected by making big changes to the rules on inter vivos gifts, substantial reforms to consideration rules and by making the rule itself pretty clear and subject to registration. I'm not sure on what ground you think this is contrary to EU law.