Gotman, Anne

Mortgaged transmission - 2018.


65

“The more civilization expands, the more heredity and tradition loose their empire,” Durkheim said. Would then inheritance be doomed to disappear and with it the inequalities it helps to perpetuate? If the highly political issue of removing inheritance remains a wishful thinking —an almost impossibility whose reasons should not be underestimated— its de-programming could be more realistic. Indeed, as housing property costs increase and population is ageing, reverse mortgages can change housing property into a cash tank. This article will show how then housing can become a bank and the house a property to be eaten, not transmitted.