A Solution To The Inheritance Problem
Nov. 7th, 2009 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aniccaThe Law Commission for England and Wales has decided that unmarried cohahiting couples should inherit each others shit. This is obviously a bad idea and will present a new and entertaining means of fallout for the bereaved. The level of commitment demonstrated in living with a partner is quite low at this point, often seen as a try-before-you-buy precursor to marriage. Though it seems appropriate to extend some and perhaps all of the legal benefits of matrimony to a cohabiting couple while this arrangement is maintained, death severs this arrangement and should be treated separately.
There is a much easier solution in any case. Rather than a half-bodged nothingness, simply make wills mandatory.
All postmortem disribution of estate woes stem from the absence of a will. Since everybody is now obliged to maintain a will there can be no dispute as to the deceased's wishes. Anyone who dies without having made a will forfeits their estate to the crown. An appropriate government department will exist to serve as trustee and executor, or the citizen is free to nominate whomever they desire to that end. Citizens would be encouraged to keep copies of their will wherever they consider it appropriate; with medical records, driving licenses, on their state issued totalitarian ID cards or tattooed on their genitals. The facility to do this would be provided, funded from inheritance tax. The opportunity to make or update a will would become a normal part of every life-changing activity; getting married, getting divorced, buying a house, bearing children, purchasing life, car, fire or mole insurance and of course, undergoing life-threatening life-saving surgery at one of our country's fine hospitals.
There, that wasn't difficult was it.
There is a much easier solution in any case. Rather than a half-bodged nothingness, simply make wills mandatory.
All postmortem disribution of estate woes stem from the absence of a will. Since everybody is now obliged to maintain a will there can be no dispute as to the deceased's wishes. Anyone who dies without having made a will forfeits their estate to the crown. An appropriate government department will exist to serve as trustee and executor, or the citizen is free to nominate whomever they desire to that end. Citizens would be encouraged to keep copies of their will wherever they consider it appropriate; with medical records, driving licenses, on their state issued totalitarian ID cards or tattooed on their genitals. The facility to do this would be provided, funded from inheritance tax. The opportunity to make or update a will would become a normal part of every life-changing activity; getting married, getting divorced, buying a house, bearing children, purchasing life, car, fire or mole insurance and of course, undergoing life-threatening life-saving surgery at one of our country's fine hospitals.
There, that wasn't difficult was it.
