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‘Queering Genealogy Through Wills’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2015

Daniel Monk
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Abstract

Wills are an overlooked source. Alongside birth, death and marriage certificates they are official legal texts that provide a record of families, kinship and personal life. They have a particular significance for research about gender and sexuality. This paper, by Daniel Monk, highlights some of the insights that they can provide and discusses the methods (and associated pitfalls) for accessing and reading them.

Keywords

Willsgendersexualitylegal research
Type
Law, Gender and Sexuality: Sources and Methods in Socio-Legal Research
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 12 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 Monk, D, ‘Sexuality and Succession Law: Beyond Formal Equality’ (2011) Feminist Legal Studies 19(3) 231–250CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 236–239.

2 Jaconelli, J (2012) ‘Wills as public documents: privacy and property rights’. 71 Cambridge Law Journal 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Kerridge, R, (2009) Parry and Kerridge: The Law of Succession. London: Sweet & MaxwellGoogle Scholar, 12th edition.

4 Blumenthal, S ‘The deviance of the will: policing the bounds of testamentary freedom in nineteenth-century America’ (2006) 119 Harvard Law Review 959Google Scholar; Leslie, MB ‘The myth of testamentary freedom’ (1996) 38 Arizona Law Review 235Google Scholar; Maillard, KN ‘The colour of testamentary freedom’ (2009) 62 Southern Methodist University Law Review 1783Google Scholar; Fellows, M.L., 1991. Wills and Trusts: “Kingdom of the Fathers”. Law and Inequality, 10, 137–162Google Scholar; Monk, D, ‘Sexuality and Succession Law: Beyond Formal Equality’ (2011) Feminist Legal Studies 19(3) 231–250CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sherman, J.G., 1981. Undue Influence and the Homosexual Testator. University of Pittsburg Law Review, 42 (1), 225–246Google Scholar.

5 Weston, K (1997) Families We Choose. New York: Columbia University PressGoogle Scholar. See also Weeks, J, Heaphy, B and Donovan, C (2001) Same Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments. London: Routledge, pp 51–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Plummer, K (ed) (1992) Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experience. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar.

6 Finch, J, Mason, J, Masson, J, Hayes, L and Wallis, L (1996) Wills, Inheritance and Families. Milton Keynes: Open University PressGoogle Scholar. See also Finch, J and Mason, J (2009) Passing on Kinship and Inheritance in England. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar.

7 Monk, D (2014) ‘Writing (Gay and Lesbian) Wills’ in Monk, D and Hacker, D (eds) Wealth, Families and Death: Socio-Legal Perspectives on Wills and Inheritance Oñati Socio-legal Series [online], 4 (2), 306–322Google Scholar. See also Hasson, E., 2013. ‘Where There's a Will There's a Woman’: Exploring the Gendered Nature of Will Making. Feminist Legal Studies 21 (1), 21–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Law Commission Intestacy and Family Provision Claims on Death (Law Com 331, 2011); Douglas, G, et al. , 2011. Enduring Love? Attitudes to Family and Inheritance Law in England and Wales. Journal of Law and Society, 38 (2), 245–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar A Humphreys, L Mill, G Morrell, G Douglas and H Woodward (2010) Inheritance and the Family: Attitudes to Will-making and Intestacy. London: NATCEN; Williams, C, Potter, G and Douglas, G (2008) ‘Cohabitation and intestacy: public opinion and law reform’ (2008) 20Child and Family Law Quarterly 499Google Scholar.

9 W H Gass (1994) ‘The art of self: autobiography in an age of narcissism’. Harpers 43.

10 Gordon, DS ‘Reflecting on the language of death’ (2010) 34 Seattle Law Review 379Google Scholar, at 394. See also Hacker, D (2010) ‘Soulless wills’ 35 Law and Social Inquiry 957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Monk, D (2013) ‘E M Forster's Will: an overlooked posthumous publication’. Legal Studies 33 (4), 572–597CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Souhami, D (2001) Gluck: Her Biography. London: Phoenix PressGoogle Scholar.

13 See Monk, D, ‘E M Forster's Will: an overlooked posthumous publication’. Legal Studies 33 (4), 572–597sCrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 588–9.

14 Cook, M (2014) Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London. LondonCrossRefGoogle Scholar, Palgrave at p111.

15 See Goose, N and Evans, N ‘Wills as an historical source’ in Arkell, T, Evans, N and Goose, N (eds) When Death Do Us Part: Understanding and Interpreting the Probate Records of Early Modern England (Oxford: Leopard's Head Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Whittle, J ‘Housewives and servants in rural England, 1440–1650: evidence of women's work from probate documents’ (2005) 15 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Craig, J and Litzenberger, C ‘Wills as religious propaganda: the testament of William Tracy’ (1993) 44 Journal of Ecc History 415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.