# Inheritance and Love: Turning the Parental Love Argument Against Inheritance Taxation on Its Head

Marie Bastin

► To cite this version:

Marie Bastin. Inheritance and Love: Turning the Parental Love Argument Against Inheritance Taxation on Its Head. Raisons politiques, 2023, 92 (4), pp.41-54. 10.3917/rai.092.0041. hal-05284883v2

HAL Id: hal-05284883

https://hal.science/hal-05284883v2

Submitted on 13 Oct 2025

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Marie Bastin

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut des Sciences juridique et philosophique de la
Sorbonne

Université Côte d'Azur, Centre de Recherches en Histoire des Idées

Inheritance and Love:

Turning the Parental Love Argument Against Inheritance Taxation on Its Head.<fnref n="1" />

(pre-print 2)

Introduction

One of the arguments put forward to defend the transmission of inheritances and reject their taxation relies on parental love.<fnref n="2" /> Schematically, this argument takes the following form: 1) it is just to support the love of parents for their children; 2) inheritance is a means of fulfilling this parental love; 3) therefore, it is unjust to tax inheritance.

The aim of this paper is to turn this argument on its head. Based on this same premise – the idea that it is just to support parental love – we should deduce not that inheritance tax is illegitimate but, on the contrary, that it is necessary to limit and redistribute the transfer of wealth when individuals die. The main claim is that, in a just society, parental love should be supported as a disposition to deep care, which helps people relate as equals. Then, inheritance should be controlled and redistributed because it jeopardises this love in two ways. First, each transmission within families can become a means of domination. Second, the repetition of inheritance over time creates a hierarchical society which undermine the conditions of fulfilling parental love between families.

<footnote n="1">¹ I thank Magali Bessone, Axel Gosseries, and one anonymous reviewer for the comments made on previous versions of this paper.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² This argument is found particularly among libertarians, who adopt a donor-centered perspective on inheritance and are therefore particularly inclined to defend the importance of the ability of individuals to express their love for their children. For example, Loren Lomasky writes that when the state imposes a confiscatory inheritance tax, "it is an especially cruel injury because it deprives the dead of one of their last opportunities for securing the goods that they value. The dead can no longer offer loved ones their advice, their encouragement, sympathy in times of hardship, and joy when things go well [...] To be robbed of that opportunity is to have one's ability to exercise agency sharply curtailed" (Loren E. Lomasky, *Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community*, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 270, footnote 19). The argument against taxing inheritance based on love is not necessarily linked to libertarianism, however, and it is quite conceivable that it is based on other theoretical premises.</footnote>
My approach rests on three assumptions. Firstly, it is based on an egalitarian and relational conception of justice, according to which individuals must relate as equals, i.e., without suffering oppression. Secondly, it applies only to the context of European and North American states from the 1980s onwards, a period in which the importance of inheritance as a component of the wealth of individuals has grown strongly.<fnref n="3" /> Thirdly, inheritance means the transmission of wealth held by individuals at the time of their death, or through donations during their lifetime,<fnref n="4" /> and inheritance tax describes how the state takes a portion of the wealth transmitted and redistributes it, in whatever form this tax may take in positive law.<fnref n="5" />

The response to the parental love argument against inheritance taxation developed in this paper differs from another type of response that has already been made to it, which can be called the “compatibilist response”. According to the latter, it is not unjust to tax inheritance even if it is just to support parental love, because inheritance is not a necessary means of fulfilling this love. Inheritance can therefore be severely restricted for reasons unrelated to parental love, such as equal opportunities, without jeopardising parental love itself.

I do not challenge the relevance of the compatibilist answer. I argue that this response can be complemented by a more ambitious one, which does not simply separate the egalitarian arguments in favor of inheritance tax from the arguments in favor of transmission based on parental love; it instead attempts to reconcile them. Properly understood, parental love can provide strong arguments in favor of inheritance tax. The “integrative response” is based on the idea that egalitarian and redistributive inheritance policies can be defended not only alongside, but also in the name of parental love.

The reasoning is divided into four parts. First, I present one of the philosophical forms given to the argument of parental love against the taxation of inheritance to analyse exactly how it can be deconstructed. Next, I propose to reconstruct the premise from which the integrative response will be deployed: it is right to support parental love. Thereupon, I re-examine the link between inheritance and parental love, showing that inheritance can not only express and extend parental love, but also undermine it. Finally, I deduce consequences for the politics of inheritance from the foregoing.

<footnote n="3">³ See graph 11.12 in Thomas Piketty, *Capital in the Twenty-First Century*, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014, p. 425.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Conceptually, it can be distinguished between donations, anticipated inheritances, and gifts, which are smaller in size and more frequent.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ In positive law, there is a difference, which I will leave aside, between estate tax, which is levied directly on the deceased's assets, and inheritance tax, which is levied on the assets of the deceased's heirs.</footnote>
The parental love argument against inheritance taxation

The parental love argument against inheritance taxation considers that inheritance is a
means of fulfilling parental love, and, therefore, that it is unjust to tax it.<fnref n="6" /> The idea that it is just
to support parental love for their children (and unjust to discourage it) thus plays a pivotal role
in the argument.

A version of such an argument was made by Robert Nozick,<fnref n="7" /> who defends the thesis
that inheritance is a substitute for parental love, i.e., that it is both an “expression” and an
“outgrowth” of it.<fnref n="8" /> This claim is rooted in a certain conception of the legitimacy of parental
love, based on an analysis of the temporal evolution of the parent-child bond, from the dual
point of view of parents and children.

Nozick asserts that, from the parents’ point of view, children are their “organs”.<fnref n="9" /> Hence,
the value and significance of the place of children in a parent’s life is characterised by “the
deepest love”,<fnref n="10" /> but not reduced to mere emotion, for “children form part of a wider identity
[parents] have”.<fnref n="11" /> As for children, while they are initially their parents’ responsibility, they
gradually cease to need their parents as parents and instead become their parents’ parents; in
other words, it is their responsibility to preserve the relationship.

The relationship between parents and adult children is the one relevant to inheritance,
as it is received on average at age 50.<fnref n="12" /> Nozick explains that inheritance acquires a function
once children have become adults: it can replace parental love. But this replacement function
shouldn’t take just any form. Some try “to get something from the world that symbolically
represents [their] parents’ adequate love”.<fnref n="13" /> For Nozick, this is an immature attitude, as the
expectation is doomed to failure. However, it is possible, in the author's view, to find a
“substitute” for that love<fnref n="14" />: inheritance.<fnref n="15" /> To understand how, the point of view must be changed

<footnote n="6">⁶ This is because inheritance taxation is always a withdrawal on private wealth transmission, and as such, it prevents the fulfillment of parental love made possible by inheritance. Such an idea is not libertarian in nature, as it is descriptive – taxation always takes wealth away – but it tells us nothing about the value of taxation.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Robert Nozick, *The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations*, New-York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ *Ibid.*, p. 30.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ *Ibid.*, p. 28.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Piketty, *op. cit.* (note 3), p. 388.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ *op. cit.* (note 7), p. 30.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ The difference between a symbol and a substitute is not made explicit by Nozick, who merely points out the potential difficulty of distinguishing between the two concepts. It can be suggested that inheritance is a substitute</footnote>
once again, and return to that of the parents, now that they have grown old. For them,
“bequeathing something to others is an expression of caring about them, and it intensifies those
bonds”.<fnref n="16" /> By passing on an inheritance, parents can both express and increase their love for
their children.

For Nozick, there is an asymmetry between the children’s and the parents’ point of view.
Children may find a substitute for parental love in the bequest, and realise how much they have
been loved, but they have no right to claim such a substitute by asserting that they have earned
it; it is the donor “who has earned the right to mark and serve her relational bonds by
bequeathal”.<fnref n="17" /> This priority of the donor over the beneficiary of an inheritance is a sign of the
author’s libertarianism.

Based on his analysis of the parent-child bond, Nozick defends the following normative
proposal for inheritance taxation: “restructure an institution of inheritance so that taxes will
subtract from the possessions people can bequeath the value of what they themselves have
received through bequests.”<fnref n="18" /> This proposal is based on the distinction between two types of
inheritance: those that have already been the object of transmission, and those that have been
created or earned by the donor. Only the latter can serve as a means of fulfilling parental love,
for “when the original creator or earner passes something on, a considerable portion of his self
participates in and constitutes this act, far more so than when a non-earner passes on something
he has received but not created”.<fnref n="19" /> This thesis is based on a Hegelian theory of property and
work, according to which “property earned or created is an expression of the self and a
component of it”.<fnref n="20" /> For Nozick, any transmission by inheritance of wealth directly earned or
created therefore constitutes a limit to inheritance taxation, as it is an act of transmission of
personality from parents to children, enabling them to express and intensify their love.

One of the weaknesses of Nozick’s reasoning is the questionable conception of parental
love on which it is based. The idea that “children form part of a wider identity [parents] have”
<fnref n="21" /> may not respect the equal moral value of children and parents. For example, it is hard to see
how the idea that children are the organs of parents can protect children from potential parental

<footnote>for parental love in the sense that it can signify love, even if it doesn't resemble it and even if the love is no longer present (the parent having died).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ *op. cit.* (note 7), p. 30.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ *Ibid.*, p. 31.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ *Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ *Ibid.*, p. 28.</footnote>
abuse. And even if one were to agree with the Nozickian description of parental love, one would
need to know why such love should be supported in a just society. What is missing here is a
more precise conception of the justice involved in the reasoning, and a more robust analysis of
why it is just to support parental love.

However, Nozick's reasoning highlights an aspect of inheritance that is sometimes
overlooked. Indeed, as French sociologist Anne Gotman points out, inheritance is rarely
reduced to the market value of property titles:

> Should the sentimental value of all those pieces of furniture, jewelry and other objects handed down, from the humblest ones to the family houses, be neglected? Or should it, on the contrary, be part of the questioning, the heart of it? Should attachment to childhood places be struck from the family account books? And can we do without it to understand what is at stake in family transmission, how family members play off each other, who inherits what?<fnref n="22" />

Along the same lines, the philosophers Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift point out that “the same bicycle, the same sports lessons, the same complete works of Shakespeare or the same house will be valued differently depending on whether they come from one's parents or one's fellow citizens collectively, via the state, and rightly so”.<fnref n="23" /> Therefore, it seems necessary to recognise the sentimental and expressive dimension of inheritance in the reasoning regarding its taxation. But it would be incomplete, and therefore false, to base this recognition on a romantic and naïve conception of inheritance as a means of expressing parental love and not also, at times, the desire for domination or illegitimate control.

The integrative response to the parental love argument against inheritance taxation aims to deconstruct the reasoning behind it, by reconsidering each of its premises: reconstructing the first (why might it be just to support parental love?) and re-examining the second (is inheritance only a means of fulfilling parental love or is it also a means of undermining it?).

**Reconstructing the premise of the parental love argument against inheritance taxation: it
is just to support parental love**

The parental love argument against inheritance taxation rests on the premise that it is
just to support the parental love at stake in inheritance transmissions. Reconstructing this

<footnote n="22">²² Anne Gotman, *Hériter*, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988, p. 7 [my translation].</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, *Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships*, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 135.</footnote>
premise is the linchpin from which the argument can be turned on its head. To do this, one must
a) develop a criterion of justice that can be used to assess the conditions under which it is just
to support the parental love at stake in inheritance transmissions; and b) show why it is
reasonable to think that these conditions can be met in the case of parental love in the context
of European and North American states from the 1980s onwards.

A relational criterion of justice

The fundamental principle of “universal moral equality” on which the reasoning is based
can be displayed according to two major paradigms.<fnref n="24" /> There is distributive equality, for which
justice aims to distribute social goods according to a certain metric. And there is also relational
equality, for which justice must seek to establish relationships of a certain nature. Without
making any assertion on the superiority of either paradigm, or the possibility of articulating or
reducing one to the other, the reasoning of this paper uses a criterion of justice based on
relational equality. There are two main reasons for this decision.

First, the main goal is to know under what conditions it is just to foster parental love.
Love is a form of relationship: the love given by parents cannot be separated from the love
received by children, and the quality of the relationship matters. Indeed, if parents dominate
their children, or exploit them, as is the case when certain adults take care of their parents in a
context of financial dependence, the value of parental love, or even its possibility, is weakened.
So, parental love has an impact on the way individuals relate to one another.

Second, the ultimate goal is to justify the taxation of inheritance. By using a relational
conception of equality as a basis for reasoning, it can be shown that redistributive policies can
be founded not only on distributive reasons, but also on reasons relating to the quality of
relationships. This broadens the range of possible justifications for inheritance taxation.<fnref n="25" />

<footnote n="24">²⁴ For a detailed presentation of the two equality paradigms, see Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, *Relational Egalitarianism. Living as Equals*, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2018.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Several authors have, recently, referred to a relational conception of equality to justify inheritance taxation (see for example Daniel Halliday, *The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath*, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018; Jørgen Pedersen, “Just inheritance taxation,” *Philosophy Compass*, vol. 13, no. 4, 2018, p. e12491). However, none of these texts bases a reflection on inheritance taxation on an exclusively relational conception of equality, and the majority of the remaining literature adopts a distributive conception of equality (see, for example, David G. Duff, “Taxing Inherited Wealth: A Philosophical Argument,” *Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence*, vol. 6, no. 1, 1993, p. 3–62; Michael B. Levy, “Liberal Equality and Inherited Wealth,” *Political Theory*, vol. 11, no. 4, 1983, p. 545–564).</footnote>
The criterion of justice based on a relational conception of equality can be specified using Elizabeth Anderson's seminal analyses.<fnref n="26" /> In its negative formulation, the criterion takes the following form: it is just to support parental love, provided that this makes it possible to abolish oppression between individuals, “that is, forms of social relationship by which some people dominate, exploit, marginalise, demean, and inflict violence upon others”.<fnref n="27" /> <fnref n="28" /> In its positive form, the criterion of justice can be expressed as follows: it is just to support parental love provided that this helps to give each individual the capabilities<fnref n="29" /> to relate to others equally, i.e., “to live together in a democratic community, as opposed to a hierarchical ones”,<fnref n="30" /> meaning that everyone is recognised as an equal.

**Is it just to support parental love involved in inheritance?**

Parents' love for young children is rooted in a context of responsibility and authority.<fnref n="31" /> The parental love involved in inheritance, for its part, exists between a parent and a child who has become an adult. The main feature of such a love implied by inheritance is its historical continuity. This gives it several distinctive characteristics. Philosopher Luara Ferracioli proposes an interesting thought experiment to account for this:

> Let us imagine a world that is very similar to ours but where society has structured procreation and parenting differently, and where only elderly members of society become parents and where children are conceived and gestated in high-tech government laboratories. Let us also imagine that the rationale for this arrangement is efficiency since citizens are more productive if they spend their adult lives fully engaged in the workforce and then later in life, once they have retired, they will have more time to invest in their parental role. Finally, let us assume that quality of life and life expectancy are such that children typically have at least one sufficiently healthy parent during childhood and adolescence, but typically not during their adulthood. <fnref n="32" />

According to Ferracioli, such a world in which parents and children would not benefit from the continuation of their relationship over time would be unsatisfactory because of the loss of parental love, “a type of love whereby the agent cares so much about the good of her beloved,

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” *Ethics*, vol. 109, no. 2, 1999, p. 287–337.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ *Ibid*., p. 313.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Elizabeth Anderson draws on the four faces of oppression identified by Iris Marion Young: marginalization, status hierarchy, domination, exploitation and cultural imperalism (Iris Marion Young, *Justice and the Politics of Difference*, Princeton, N.J : Princeton University Press, 1990).</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ The concept of “capability” is inspired by Amartya Sen's analyses, to which Anderson refers (*op. cit.* [footnote 26], p. 316 sqq.). It designates what individuals actually have the means to do to achieve a certain number of fundamental human functionings, taking into account the differences between individuals in their ability to use the same means (Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?,” in *Lectures on Human Values*, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 [vol. 1], p. 197–220).</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Anderson *op. cit.* (note 26), p. 313.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">³¹ For an account of such love see Brighouse and Swift, *op. cit.* (footnote 23).</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² Luara Ferracioli, “Why the Family?,” *Law, Ethics and Philosophy*, vol. 3, 2015, p. 210.</footnote>
that she is robustly disposed to take on a great deal of personal cost in order to advance the good of her beloved”.<fnref n="33" /> The historical continuity of parental love at stake in inheritance thus determines it as an inner state disposed to remarkably profound care.

There are strong grounds for believing that such love meets the criterion of relational justice, i.e., that it promotes the removal of oppression and the development of capabilities that enable individuals to relate equally. From the children’s point of view, Ferracioli gives the example of the adult child who has become severely depressed and unable to relate to others; because of the historical depth of the love that binds them to their children, parents are among the individuals most likely to take care of them. Therefore, parental love provides a response to the risks of vulnerability and dependence that are part and parcel of any human life, and thereby develops children’s capability to avoid oppressive relationships that easily arise from this state.

Conversely, from the parents' point of view, caring for their children is for them a “great source of meaning – it enriches the lives of adults significantly”.<fnref n="34" /> The way in which the role of parents is experienced by the individuals concerned, as a profound enrichment of their existence, also provides reasons to believe that it contributes to the development of adults' capabilities to relate equally to others. It fosters people's sense of self-existence and self-esteem, as well as their capability to care for and anticipate the needs of others.

The few lines of thought outlined above show that there are good reasons for arguing that it is just, in the context of European and North American states since the 1980s, to support parental love, characterised as the disposition to deep and continuous care. However, the plausibility of such an assertion is itself conditional on the legitimacy of the statuses of parents and children. Against the idea of a natural parental bond, there are strong arguments for considering it thoroughly political. While individuals raise and take care of individuals from the following generation in many ways, the law decides who is declared as a parent of which children. The state decides who has which obligations and responsibilities regarding what aspect of the relationship between individuals of different generations.<fnref n="35" />

The statuses of parents and children must therefore also satisfy the criterion of relational justice. Only then can it be just to support parental love. The questions of the number of individuals who can be parents to the same child, their gender and sex, and whether or not there is a biological link between parents and children remain entirely open.

<footnote n="33">³³ *Ibid.*, p. 215.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 216.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ For a development on the political conception of the family bond, see for example Martha Nussbaum, “Rawls and Feminism,” in Samuel Freeman (ed.), *The Cambridge Companion to Rawls*, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 504–505.</footnote>
# Re-examining the link between inheritance and parental love: does inheritance foster or undermine parental love?

## The compatibilist response

The idea at the heart of the compatibilist response to the parental love argument against taxing inheritance is that inheritance is not a necessary means of expressing parental love, and that parental love cannot therefore be used as an objection to inheritance taxation.

The reasoning for constructing such a response comes from Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift's *Family Values*.<fnref n="36" /> It entails comparing inheritance transmissions with other parenting activities that express the deep, ongoing love that binds parents and children together.<fnref n="37" /> For example, in terms of their link with parental love, inheritance transmissions could be compared with the visits that parents and children make to each other. There has been one recent context in which such visits have been severely restricted: the Covid-19 pandemic. More specifically, in France, visits to EHPAD retirement homes<fnref n="38" /> have been sharply curtailed. Yet the consequences of such measures have had relational consequences. This is underlined by the report mandated by the French Senate in 2021, for the proposed law to create a right of visitation:

> The consequences were certainly terrible, first and foremost for the patients and residents themselves: a feeling of imprisonment, reluctance to call for help for fear of being hospitalized in solitude, a slipping syndrome and abandonment to death, impossible funeral rites, impossible access to the last rites.

Such a description clearly shows why limiting children's parental visitation rights, particularly (but not only) in the context of EHPADs, directly endangers parental love: it threatens the psychic integrity of individuals and weakens the conditions of possibility for the development and exercise of caring dispositions. Conversely, it is entirely possible to imagine a world in which the transmission of inheritance from parents to children would be massively limited, without it being unrealistic to assume that the deep and broad parental love from which parents and children benefit could be developed and maintained.

The “compatibilist” response to the parental love argument against inheritance taxation underlines a central element concerning the link between inheritance and parental love: it is not

<footnote n="36">³⁶ *op. cit.* (note 23).</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Since Brighouse and Swift are interested in the relationship between a parent and a dependent child, they compare inheritance with other parenting activities relating to the form of love associated with parental responsibility, such as bedtime stories.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ “Établissement d’hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes”, a very common form of retirement home in France.</footnote>
a link of necessity. But this response is insufficient because it sees parental love only as an
objection to taxation. A more ambitious response, on the contrary, seeks to ground inheritance
taxation on parental love.

The integrative response

The link between inheritance and parental love is fundamentally ambiguous. On the one hand, even if inheritance is not a necessary means of fulfilling parental love, as the compatibilist response shows, this does not prevent it from functioning, in certain circumstances, as a means of expressing and increasing parental love. In this respect, there is some truth to the parental love argument against inheritance taxation.

However, the affective and relational dimension of inheritance does not only
allow it to express parental love. There are good reasons to believe, on the other hand, that
inheritance plays at least as much a part in fostering parental love as it does in undermining it.

First of all, let us take a generational view of the situation in Europe and North America
from the 1980s onwards. In this context, several features of inheritance make it particularly
conducive to undermining parental love.

Firstly, inheritance can be used as a means of parental domination over children. As
Nozick himself points out:

> Notice that the power to bequeath may also bring a power to dominate, through the threat, explicit or implicit, not to bequeath if the potential receivers do not behave to one's satisfaction. We might conjecture that it is this power and continuing control that many wealthy people care about, rather than the ability to enhance and express the bonds of personal relations, and that their compliant children or associates would have been better off without any institution of inheritance at all.<fnref n="39" />

What Nozick alludes to has been analysed, for example, by legal historian Hendrik
Hartog, who describes the legal and emotional strategies of elderly people in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries in the USA who used promises of inheritance to keep their children by their
side.<fnref n="40" />

It is important to stress that the risk of inheritance becoming a means of parental
domination over children varies according to the way in which positive law frames
transmission. It is greater in countries (as the United States) where there is testamentary
freedom, i.e., where individuals have the right to draw up a will and bequeath their wealth to

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Nozick *op. cit.* (note 7), p. 32.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Hendrik Hartog, *Someday All This Will Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age*, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.</footnote>
whomever they wish.<fnref n="41" /> In countries where portions of inheritance are reserved for children, such as France and Germany, parents retain some latitude to use inheritance to put pressure on their children. They can, for example, threaten to consume their wealth instead of passing it on, and they still freely dispose of a portion of their inheritance (which, in France, corresponds to half the estate if there is only one child, a third if there are two children, a quarter if there are four), which they can dangle in front of their children.

When there are several children, parental domination can also be exercised through the power to arbitrarily discriminate against children, for example on the grounds of gender. In the case of France, the sociologists Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac have shown that, even if the law imposes equal sharing between children, parents may decide, with the help of notaries, to use accounting techniques<fnref n="42" /> to privilege one child, often the eldest male, over the others.<fnref n="43" />

Conversely, inheritance can also be used by children to dominate their parents. The many tales of plots fomented by future heirs, some of which can be found at the heart of nineteenth-century novels<fnref n="44" />, reveal the importance of this phenomenon. As an example of the domination of children over parents regarding inheritance, parents decide to sell their house as a life annuity in order to be able to continue living in their house, but their children sometimes decide to pressure their parents to go into a retirement home instead, so as not to be deprived of the inheritance of the house. As most inheritance transfers take place at a time when parents are elderly, this makes them more vulnerable to their children's influence and less able to defend their own interests, thereby giving children the opportunity to unduly prioritise their own interests. The fact that there are cultural norms which mean that most inheritances pass from parents to children, even in countries with testamentary freedom,<fnref n="45" /> is further reason to believe that inheritance can become a means for children to exert acts of domination over their elderly parents.

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ This is the argument at the heart of the Hegelian critique of testamentary freedom: “Further, the recognition of a man’s competence to bequeath his property arbitrarily is much more likely to be an occasion for breach of ethical obligations and for mean exertions and equally mean subservience; and it also provides opportunity and justification for the folly, caprice, and malice of attaching to professed benefactions and gifts vain, tyrannical, and vexatious conditions operative after the testator’s death and so in any case after his property ceases to be his” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, *Philosophy of Right*, translated by S. W. Dyde, New York: Cosimo, 2008, §179).</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² For example, by undervaluing a structuring asset such as a family house, parents can minimise the financial compensation owed to other heirs.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, *Le genre du capital*, Paris: La Découverte, 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ See, for example, the many works by Honoré de Balzac that deal with inheritance.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ In 2007, 72.6% of inheritances in the United States, a country where testamentary freedom predominates, came from parents (Edward N. Wolff and Maury Gittleman, “Inheritances and the distribution of wealth or whatever happened to the great inheritance boom?,” *Journal of Economic Inequality*, vol. 12, no. 14, 2014, p. 446).</footnote>
Inheritance can therefore become the means of domination between parents and children. In this sense, it destroys the foundations of parental love. Indeed, the ability to care for others in a deep and lasting way excludes, by definition, using one's power to subjugate others. Using inheritance to blackmail one's children or plotting against one's parents to reclaim an inheritance more quickly are all situations in which parental love is jeopardised.

Let us shift the perspective from the situation created by the transmission of inheritance within families to the one between families, focusing not on a single transmission but on the repetition of transmissions over time. This new point of view brings further arguments for asserting that inheritance undermines parental love in the context of European and North American states from the 1980s on.

Indeed, the work of economists has shown that since the 1980s, the increase in the share of inherited wealth as part of the total wealth of individuals has gone hand in hand with an increase in its concentration in a small part of the population.<fnref n="46" /> As it turns out, the concentration of inheritances over time has relational effects. It leads, in fact, to what might be called “economic segregation”<fnref n="47" /> a “hyperinegalitarian society”,<fnref n="48" /> or social “stratification”.<fnref n="49" /> Leaving aside the details of the conceptual differences behind these formulations, what they have in common is that the concentration of inheritances over time creates and maintains a hierarchical society, in which social mobility is low, i.e., an individual’s life prospects, in all their multiple dimensions, depend on the wealth of the family group to which this individual belongs. Moreover, in a society where there are unjust inequalities of wealth along the lines of racism and sexism, the multiplication of inheritance transmissions over time helps reinforce these injustices.<fnref n="50" />

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ For France, Thomas Piketty uses as an indicator the “the percentage of individuals in each cohort who inherit (as bequest or gift) amounts larger than the least well paid 50 percent of the population earn in a lifetime” (Piketty, *op. cit.* [note 3], p. 420). He shows that from 10% for nineteenth-century generations, this rate fell to 2-4% in the interwar period and has been rising again since the 1970s-80s to reach 15% for generations born in the 2010-2020s. This means that the decline in inheritances during the inter-war years is the historical exception to a period characterised by an increase in the volume of wealth transmitted and its concentration in certain family lines. In other European states and in North America, inheritance is also concentrated in a small part of the population (see, for example, Marc Szydlik, “Inheritance and Inequality: Theoretical Reasoning and Empirical Evidence,” *European Sociological Review*, vol. 20, no. 1, 2004, p. 31–45 for Germany; and Joseph E. Stiglitz, *People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent*, New-York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019 for the United States).</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Halliday, *op. cit.* (note 25), p. 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ Piketty, *op. cit.* (note 3), p. 265.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, “Inheritance and Stratification,” in Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller (eds.), *Inheritance and Wealth in America*, Boston: Springer, 1998, p. 199, sqq.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Thus, sociological studies have shown how social mechanisms differentially favour the transmission of wealth according to racist dynamics (certain forms of capital are favored, which give white people an advantage). See for</footnote>
This type of hierarchical society, brought about by the concentration of inheritances, has harmful effects on the ability of individuals to maintain the deep caring relationship that constitutes parental love. Indeed, while parental love cannot be forced, it does have conditions of possibility, such as the proportion of time devoted to leisure in relation to working time, the type and location of housing, the existence of means of transport between the parents' home and that of the children, and the health conditions of the individuals concerned. In a society dominated by strong social stratification and low social mobility, these conditions are unevenly distributed among individuals. The concentration of inheritance means that some individuals are more or less deprived of the capability to maintain meaningful bonds of love between parents and children.

## What are the implications for inheritance policies?

If inheritance can both foster and undermine parental love, it is because it puts parental love at risk. If one accepts that it is just to promote parental love in the context of European and North American states since the 1980s, the question that arises is: how can inheritance legislation and public policy ensure that inheritance is more likely to promote parental love and less likely to jeopardise it? The detailed answer to this question depends on empirical data specific to a given historical and social context. However, the previous description of how inheritance can weaken parental love provides some broad directions for inheritance policies.<fnref n="51" />

Firstly, given that since the 1980s, the repetition of inheritances has led to their concentration, which weakens the capability of individuals to maintain loving relationships between parents and children, inheritance policies must be strongly redistributive. From this point of view, it would seem justified to advocate inheritance taxation. It is reasonable to consider that the risk posed by inheritance on parental love increases with the economic value of wealth. Indeed, the larger the transmission of an inheritance, the more it contributes to the hierarchical structure of society, and thus ultimately weakens the conditions that make parental love possible. Consequently, a highly progressive tax rate for inheritance taxation seems appropriate to protect parental love. This means that inheritances below a certain amount would be taxed at a low rate, thus ensuring a certain degree of discretion in the relationship between

<footnote>example Jennifer C. Mueller, *The Social Reproduction of Systemic Racial Inequality*, Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University, Texas, 2013.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ The following applies only from the point of view of parental love, and not all things considered.</footnote>
parents and children, guaranteeing the very possibility of a quality relationship.<fnref n="52" /> Conversely, for transfers of wealth with high economic value, a high rate of taxation is justified to protect the conditions of possibility of parental love.

Secondly, to combat the way in which every transmission of inheritance can undermine parental love, inheritance tax does not appear to be sufficient. Indeed, as it has been shown, whatever the distribution of inheritance within society, every transmission of inheritance poses a risk to parental love, as it can be used as an instrument of domination. It is therefore necessary to defend another set of inheritance policies aimed at controlling untaxed inheritance transfers, to prevent them from undermining parental love. This could involve, for example, reinforcing the role of intermediaries who would check that an inheritance is not being used to dominate the heirs, creating mediation bodies in the event of conflict, and changing the recruitment and training of notaries to avoid sexist discrimination.

This leads to the idea that inheritance policies should focus not only on the economic value of the property passed on, but also on its nature. Thus, inheritance does not affect parental love in the same way if it is a financial security or an asset such as a family business or a family house. This must make a difference in the way transmissions are legally regulated within a family<fnref n="53" />.

## Conclusion

While the parental love argument against taxing inheritance holds that taxing inheritance threatens parental love, it has been shown that it is rather inheritance itself that poses a risk to parental love. Consequently, if one agrees on an egalitarian and relational conception of justice, and if one accept that it is just to foster ongoing love between parents and children, then a coherent position is to defend redistributive and monitoring inheritance policies.

<footnote n="52">⁵² Empirical and contextual considerations, the study of which goes beyond the scope of this paper, should make it possible to determine the progressivity of the tax rate. To give an order of magnitude, French law authorises each individual to pass on up to 100,000 euros tax-free by inheritance or an *inter vivos* gift.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ See, for example, the way Christopher Yeomans interprets the Hegelian theory of inheritance and the family, and defends different inheritance policies for “agricultural estate”, “estate of trade”, and “estate of civil servants” (Christopher Yeomans, “Property in the tension between family and civil society: Inheritance according to G. W. F. Hegel and Eduard Gans,” in *Inheritance and the Right to Bequeath*, Abingdon, United Kingdom & New-York, United States: Routledge, 2022).</footnote>
Autrice

Marie Bastin est agrégée de philosophie, doctorante en philosophie à l'ISJPS (Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne). Elle est membre des projets Fair Inheritance à l'UCLouvain et PHILHERIT à l'Université Côte d'Azur. Elle mène des recherches sur les questions de justice relatives à la transmission des richesses par héritage.

Author

Marie Bastin is holder of the “Agrégation de philosophie” (national qualifying exam for philosophy teachers). She is a Ph.D. candidate at the ISJPS (Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne). She is member of the Fair Inheritance project at UCLouvain and of the PHILHERIT project at Université Côte d'Azur. Her research focuses on justice issues concerning the transmission of wealth through inheritance.

Résumé

Héritage et amour : retourner sur lui-même l'argument contre la taxation de l'héritage fondé sur l'amour parental.

L'argument contre la taxation de l'héritage fondé sur l'amour parental considère que l'héritage est un moyen de réaliser l'amour parental et qu'il est donc injuste de le taxer. Le but de l'article est de retourner cet argument sur lui-même. Pour cela nous reconstruisons la prémisse selon laquelle il est juste de favoriser l'amour parental, à partir d'une conception relationnelle de l'égalité et parvenons à une définition de l'amour parental comme disposition à un soin profond et continu. Dès lors, un examen minutieux du lien entre héritage et amour parental révèle le caractère fondamentalement ambigu de l'héritage : il peut tout aussi bien favoriser que mettre en danger l'amour parental. Le risque que fait peser l'héritage sur l'amour parental justifie alors de le contrôler et de le redistribuer par la fiscalité successorale. Dans une société juste, la taxation de l'héritage n'est donc pas seulement compatible avec l'amour parental, elle est requise par lui.
Inheritance and Love: Turning the Parental Love Argument Against Inheritance
Taxation on Its Head

The parental love argument against inheritance taxation holds that inheritance is a means of fulfilling parental love, and that it is therefore unjust to tax it. The aim of this paper is to turn this argument on its head. To do so, I reconstruct the premise that it is just to support parental love based on a relational conception of equality. I arrive at a definition of parental love as a disposition to deep, ongoing care. A careful examination of the link between inheritance and parental love reveals the fundamentally ambiguous nature of inheritance; it can both foster and undermine parental love. The risk that inheritance poses to parental love justifies controlling and redistributing it through inheritance taxation. In a just society, inheritance taxation is not only compatible with parental love, but also required by it.