ABSTRACT
Family property, as the other chapters in this volume have demonstrated, comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and forms according to jurisdiction. Legal geography helps map out contours and comparisons with respect to family and marital property and the ‘where’ matters greatly as it shapes the rules. But while space and location play an important role in defining family property, so does ‘when’ or the element of time. This chapter is a brief attempt to make such an inquiry into legal time in order to explore the relationship between time, family property, and wealth inequality. In many ways, time is one of the most crucial building blocks of the family and kinship and family identity ‘do not exist without extension over time’, in that repetition, persistence, and continuity are key factors in forming and subsequently reinforcing the notion of inter-personal and inter-generational connection. The possession of family property over time is also a key component in building family identity. Time can consolidate family money just as it can erode it and what comes into focus through this analysis is that family as property and family property are shaped according to two completely different timeframes, using two completely different concepts of time, based on a family’s situatedness on the wealth spectrum.
Tait, Allison Anna, Family Property over Time (June 13, 2024) in Research Handbook on Family Property and the Law (Elgar 2024).
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