Family, Law, and Inheritance in America

Download or read book Family, Law, and Inheritance in America written by Yvonne Pitts and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yvonne Pitts explores nineteenth-century inheritance practices by focusing on testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills, claiming the testator lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. By anchoring the study in the history of local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that "capacity" was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values.