The Invisible Hand from the Grave

Abstract

The practice of giving the wealthy perpetual control of their assets is re-emerging in an era of great wealth inequality, long after it had been banned in common law countries. The philosophical justification for such control rests on the claim that there are posthumous rights to wealth, and that such rights do not extend in problematic way to other goods, such as political suffrage. On the basis of such a claim, we give people freedom of testation, and deem them vulnerable to posthumous harm. I present a short history of legally sanctioned posthumous control of property in common law, and I argue that its philosophical justification is untenable. No principled case for posthumous rights to wealth survives scrutiny, and the large and powerful institutions that enforce such rights are morally illegitimate.

Assessing the Perpetual Charitable Trust: Are the Wishes of the Dead More Important Than the Needs of the Living?

“…First, someone might point out that these trusts are already designed for charitable purposes, so it is not as though we are choosing between throwing money away and applying it to good purposes. It should be acknowledged, however, that the notion of charity is interpreted pretty broadly, to include taking care of abandoned guinea pigs and preserving Huey military helicopters (Lam, 2019). And, as we have seen with the Hershey trust, given the right conditions and enough time, the available resources can balloon far beyond what the charitable purpose might require.…”