Disinheriting Sons

1906

A Suggestion for the Chastening and Improvement of Rich Parents

The idea occurs to me that one of the laws most urgently needed would make it impossible for a son to inherit even a cent from his parents. Of course the female progeny of a man would have to be excepted from such an arrangement. Such legislation would oblige the indulgent father to give his son a common sense education, cultivate in him a sense of healthy independence. Secondly, the young man who, under the present dispensation, has more money than sense or conception of his ethical obligations to society would find his path less slippery and would have the rough corners of his self-conceit rounded out. Thirdly, parents would find life much easier and would get a chance to cross the Styx in a natural way, not accelerated by the heartache due to the behavior of their children; and fourthly, the proposition would act as a very convenient regulator for the distribution of the national wealth.

Let every man continue making all the money he can — the more the better. He may also spend it in whatever manner he pleases; but after his demise the money he has accumulated should revert to the State, except that part necessary in order to keep the wife of the deceased and the female members of his family in the degree of comfort enjoyed by them during the life of the individual concerned. In the case of the daughters of a man so deceased their share should also revert to the State at the time of their marriage; the benefits of their father's estate, however, should be assured them in case certain conditions should make matrimony an undesirable state. The widow should be subject to the same conditions — remarriage should cause her to forfeit all claims to her former husband's estate. In her case, however, the portion due should be subject to no other conditions. The last named arrangement would prevent a good many of the old man's darling marriages, and would cause a decided decrease in moral iniquity of a very obnoxious character.

This proposition naturally sounds radical enough to be called Spartan, yet such a law, while placing no curb on personal ambition, would rob thousands of misguided parents of the only pleasure they really have — that of slaving for an ungrateful posterity. A suggestion like this could, of course, only come from Sans Galette et Sans Famille, in the New York Sun.