You may read the story that because the Baby Boom generation as a whole is richer than other generations, the next generation will likely inherit billions of dollars. How that is divided among individuals is a different issue, but people will inherit something. If the town or city you were born in the property prices have gone up, likely your parents or grandparents were able to buy a house for less than $10,000 and can no sell it for something in the 100,000’s plus, that is one small example of an inheritance which is coming.

In a different look at inheritances is the book The Inheritance by Joanna Goodman published by HarperCollins, NY, 2024.The story is a lady goes to work in the secretarial pool of a large company, catches the eye of the CEO who enjoys her sexual company. The result is a child; the man dies unexpectedly in a plane crash and the woman decides to have the baby because she truly believed the man loved her. He kept her in the shadows of his life, wrote her notes and said enough nice things for her to believe. The man’s estate comes up, she petitions for a slice, but the courts rule no. The primary reason is for generations, “bastard child or children born out of wedlock” had very few legal rights. And many people who have money are not interested in good will to look after possible children. They will raise money for charities that look after people, but not directly. The law spoke of direct relations or from marriages.

The world moves on and you might remember the CSI TV series, the use of DNA for testing comes forth. It takes a few years but courts and most people believe if there is a DNA match, there is proof.the lady is now in her 40’s she tries again to get a piece of the fortune, partly because she needs it, partly because scientific progress changes things, although it takes the court system time to catch up. The book is about one of the first cases, the defense lawyer likes the old rules, the court finds one of the brothers died and left his brain for research. There was no reason to dig up the grave, the DNA was tested and came back and 98.4% agreement they are a match. The lady has genes of the late brother.

In the book, there was another case, another delay, but likely she would win something. In the past with inheritance cases, if the banks believe there will be a settlement soon, the banks can give partial payment of the funds expected as a loan.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, science has the ability to change how we see things and when it does, it will move into the court system as evidence. Of course, ever since science has been use, both sides will present evidence from people of science background to determine if the proper handling of evidence was done and so forth. One side will say yes the science helps them, the other side says the science does not, which is the reason we have courts.

In the book, the young lady led her life from early age to expect the inheritance. It took a long time because it this case, no one wants to give up money, whether they can afford it or not. If you are expecting an inheritance, hopefully you will see it as a lottery win and not live your life as the inheritance is coming tomorrow.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.