Daniel Hartog’s One Day This Will All Be Yours: A History of Inheritance and Old Age explores how individuals, from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, sought care for themselves as they became elderly by inducing their adult children to care for them in exchange for the promise of inheritance. Hartog analyzes several cases where the adult children used the legal system to enforce the promise of inheritance made to them after having cared for their elderly parents. Hartog’s case studies show that there is no clear-cut legal principle for determining when the care was undertaken gratuitously and when there was an enforceable contract in these situations. However, Hartog focuses less on legal doctrine and instead analyzes the psychological and emotional aspects that shaped the relationships between the elderly and their adult children and the different familial roles involved during a time when elderly care was privatized.
See Naomi Cahn, Book Review: Hartog’s Someday All This Will Be Yours, Concurring Opinions, Jan. 8, 2012.
