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E-book
Author Pitts, Yvonne

Title Family, law, and inheritance in America : a social and legal history of nineteenth-century Kentucky / Yvonne Pitts, Purdue University
Published Cambridge [England] : Cambridge University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource
Series Cambridge historical studies in American law and society
Cambridge historical studies in American law and society.
Contents 1. 'Parental justice': inheritance and obligation in families -- 2. 'My black family': manumissions and freedom in inheritance disputes -- 3. Arbiters of sanity: medical experts and jurists -- 4. Physical impairments and degenerate minds: the body as evidence -- 5. A special power: women's testamentary capacity
Summary "Yvonne Pitts explores inheritance practices by focusing on nineteenth-century testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills. These disappointed heirs claimed that their departed relative lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. These inheritance disputes criss-crossed a variety of legal and cultural terrains, including ordinary people's understandings of what constituted insanity and justice, medical experts' attempts to infuse law with science, and the independence claims of women. Pitts uncovers the contradictions in the body of law that explicitly protected free will while simultaneously reinforcing the primacy of blood in mediating claims to inherited property. By anchoring the study in local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that 'capacity' was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values about family, race relations and rationality. These concepts evolved as Kentucky transitioned from a conflicted border state with slaves to a developing free-labor, industrializing economy"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Inheritance and succession -- Kentucky -- 19th century
Wills -- Kentucky -- 19th century
HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century.
Inheritance and succession
Wills
Kentucky
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2012044901
ISBN 1139564994
9781139564991
9781107250444
1107250447
9781107247956
1107247950
9781107248786
1107248787
1107241766
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9781139889735
1107251273
9781107251274
1107249619
9781107249615