Article on Successions Law and Marriage

Angela Campbell (McGill University – Faculty of Law) published an article entitled, I Do, I Will, 47:2 UBC Law Review 367 (2014). Provided below is the abstract from SSRN:

This article explores how the protection of traditional marriage, as one of successions law’s central ambitions, encroaches on individuals’ ability to organize their estates according to their own true intentions. Emphases on marriage within successions law may be at odds with efforts to create kinship through testamentary dispositions, affirming through a will relationships that lack formal recognition. Juridical neglect of these relationships yields disparate effects for those who are single, those who share bonds of intimacy with more than one other person, or those whose most important relationships do not reflect marriage-like qualities. The centralization of marriage, within the governance of testamentary successions, reinforces the constructed divide between “legitimate and illegitimate relationships”. This in turn discourages “relationship diversity,” debases crucial social bonds that fall outside of marriage, and rationalizes policy decisions that discriminate against those who cannot or choose not to marry.