The Significance of Inheritance and Heirlooms

Next-of-kin always have to consider and make decisions about what should happen to all the furniture, household utensils, personal belongings and heirlooms left in a home after one, or the sole, inhabitant has passed on. What should be sold, given away or discarded? What legacy had the deceased foreseen (Marcoux 2001)? What legal rules need to be considered? Interviews about inheritance are full of stories of how such distribution may occur, such as by elaborate ways of drawing lots or home-made rules of primogeniture and gender, archetypically when the gold watch is given to the eldest son by tacit agreement. They also involve the delicate question of the potential monetary value of things, as well as the difficulty of discarding things that used to belong to a loved one (Hallam and Hockey 2001; Miller and Parrot 2007), leading people to store items in attics and basements, placing them in a kind of liminal space (Selmer 2017).

The value that heirlooms possess is primarily an affective value tied to former owners and past generations, but the potential commercial value is constantly present as a discreet companion (Selmer 2017). People seem to distance themselves from the possible commercial value when talking about heirlooms by repeatedly underlining that ‘It's not worth anything’. Even so, inherited antiquities are constantly being placed on the market, and gold buyers report that the current high price of gold means that greater numbers of heirlooms in the form of jewellery are now being sold – often with a heavy heart. Higher gold prices do not mean much to the wealthy, but for less prosperous people the sentimental value of heirlooms will be compared with their monetary value and with other objects or benefits that this money could provide. In such circumstances, the delicate balance may tip and the gold necklace received as an inheritance may be sold. In principle, the monetary value of personal and household effects should be assessed and included in the estate and distributed according to a will or the legal rules. However, if the heirs agree, they distribute such things among themselves with no interference from the probate court.

Hanne is a 48-year-old woman who regards herself as the black sheep of the family in terms of socio-economic status. She recollected how she and her three siblings had divided the estate of their wealthy parents among them. This was done in a warm and loving atmosphere with tears and laughter, drinking red wine, looking at old photos and sharing childhood memories. One sister expressed a wish to keep the silver cutlery. They all agreed. But in the ensuing months Hanne began to think about the commercial value of the silverware. ‘I checked the value on the internet late one evening. I'm a bit embarrassed that I did, but it was valuable.’ Hanne had told herself to let go of this thought because she was afraid it would destroy her relationship with her siblings. By way of a final remark, she told me that she had no children of her own, so anyhow, there would have been no point in passing the family cutlery on to her. Hanne recognised that the cutlery was a family thing that should be passed on to future generations, and she accepted that it was her sister who was in the position to keep the line unbroken. ‘Still. I could have used the money’, she said.

Heirlooms in a Danish context are comparable to the objects that are kept out of exchange in Melanesia described by Marcel Mauss (1990) and Annette Weiner (1992). Inalienable possessions have qualities that express the value an object has when it is kept by its owners and inherited within the same family or descent group. Age adds value, since age attests to the recipients’ ability to keep the object within the family. Likewise in Denmark: to be able to keep heirlooms in the family testifies to the status and strength of the keepers. On the other hand, like gifts exchanged between individuals and groups, inherited things have a capacity to bring about and maintain relations with deceased family members who once owned them. Simultaneously, heirlooms are always a visual reminder of the potentiality of future generations.

Inherited things like a piece of furniture, a porcelain figurine or a painting selected to be displayed visually in a home in Denmark constitute a material demonstration of the wider historical context in which the owner locates herself. Rebecca Empson (2007) explores ‘what kinship looks like’ in Mongolia through things that are either displayed visually on top of the chest kept in every household or concealed inside it and shows how the tension between two modes of relatedness is laid out. Patrilineal descent is deliberately displayed; relations created through women are not made visible but hidden inside. In the Danish context, bilateral descent means that inherited things can originate from a wide range of ancestors. The things displayed come to represent distinct points in the past where the owner anchors herself. At the same time, indirectly and tacitly, the things present have a backdrop of all the absent and not visible ancestors, be they forgotten or opted out. This is what ancestry may ‘look like’ in Denmark.

Contrary to personal belongings and household effects, the devolution of assets like cash or real estate follows legal rules or a last will and testament, without much scope for action by the heirs. But, despite the general conception that money is a general equivalent, inherited money can take the quality of a thing and become rich in significance. Some take pride in keeping inherited money separate from their everyday budget and spend it in a way that they imagine would have pleased the deceased, some acquire an object as a tribute to the deceased, while others invest the money in assets that they associate with a long-term transactional order (Parry and Bloch 1989) and for the good of coming generations (Selmer and Holdgaard 2013). On the other hand, spending inherited money hastily, carelessly and on transient consumption, as Peter did, can act as a denial of being part of the deceased's legacy.

Family Relations and Probate

Although Peter did not explain the details of his estrangement from his parents, his story demonstrates the well-known fact that not all kinship relations are warm and loving. Peter removed his parents’ money and things from his life and mind. In doing so, he acknowledged the power of material things to maintain relationships; by refusing to keep and care for any of his parents’ belongings he tried to de-kin himself. Differentiation, hierarchy, neglect, exclusion or sibling rivalry are an inherent part of kinship relations. Death brings about a rearrangement of the relations among the surviving family members and may invoke illicit acts of theft, as when one sister claims ownership of spirits that rightfully belonged to another (Lambek 2011), or dubious acts, as when Hanne's sister claimed the silver cutlery as a family heirloom without compensating Hanne for its substantial monetary value.

Families face many legal and emotional challenges in regard to the probate moment. Very akin to what happens in the context of divorce (Simpson 1994, 1997), the implicit exchanges within a family come out in the open and become visible when a family member dies. Financial and emotional arrangements are reflected on and restructured. The devolution of an estate, its assets and chattels become a concrete expression of positions within the family, even more so in a blended family. In addition, the probate moment is a moment of legal consciousness, an occasion when people reflect on different principles concerning what is fair and just. Such reflections are reliant on legal rules but are not completely identical to them: law leaves room for individual decisions, choices and preferences (Holdgaard et al 2020; Moore 1978). Members of the blended family ask themselves: Whose maintenance is protected? What are the legal rules and possibilities? And most importantly: Who counts as family? In law, in life? At this moment it is simultaneously revealed how economic relations penetrate and form relations of kinship in the domestic sphere and how state intervention occurs in intimate life.

The Danish Inheritance Act 2008

In 2008, a new Inheritance Act was passed in Denmark, inter alia in order to cope with the legal challenges posed by divorce, multiple subsequent marriages and partnerships, and resulting blended families. Former rules were regarded as being out of step with the realities of Danish family life and reform was deemed necessary.

The very first article in the Danish Inheritance Act 2008 concerns the inheritance rights of kinsfolk by law. The English term intestacy is not adequate here, because it implies that the default setting is one in which a last will and testament exists. Historically, the freedom to dispose of one's own property freely by writing a last will and testament has been very limited in Denmark. Accordingly, the point of departure in the Danish Inheritance Act is inheritance by law.

The first class of inheritors, described at the very beginning of the Act, consists of all the lineal descendants of the deceased. More distant relatives, like for example parents, siblings, nieces or nephews, belong to the second and third classes. They only become relevant if the first class of inheritors is exhausted. In other words, no member of a subsequent class can assume the position of legal heir as long as there are any living members of a preceding class. This system of representation is strictly per stirpes, a legal term meaning by blood line or by root. Shares are split on a vertical basis by family lines, as determined by the number of heirs in the first generation. Each heir in this generation receives an equal share. If one member of the first generation of heirs has died, her descendants step in and share the vacant portion equally among them. This system of representation thus ensures that each branch of a family receives an identical share in total.

If the deceased has descendants, the legal share of a surviving spouse is 50 percent. Otherwise, the spouse inherits everything. In addition, a surviving spouse is always secured a supplementary portion, a minimum amount required for maintenance. The technicalities of this rule are complicated, but the end result is that for people who do not own their own flat or house, this sum will often mean that the surviving spouse takes over the whole estate. There are no similar rules to secure the maintenance of children, whether they are below or above the age of eighteen, which in Denmark is the age of majority.

In Denmark, the conjugal link has gained weight vis-à-vis the vertical link to descendants in regards to inheritance. In 1845, a legal share to a surviving spouse was set at 25 percent, in 1963 at 33 percent and in 2008 at 50 percent. In the same period, individualism as an ideology has superseded legal obligations to family and kin. In 1845 a testator could dispose of 25 percent of the estate in a last will and testament. Following the changes in 2008, donors can now freely bequeath 75 percent as they see fit. Consequently, only 25 percent of the estate now constitutes an indefeasible share to be distributed among the legal heirs – descendants and surviving spouse. The Inheritance Act Committee that prepared the revision in 2008 had discussed whether the indefeasible share to direct descendants should be completely abolished, but the conclusion was that ‘abolishing it would be a break away from a deeply rooted legal tradition. In addition, children's right to an indefeasible share would appear to be in conformity with what most find natural’ (Ministry of Justice, Copenhagen 2006: 84).

The enhanced testamentary freedom makes it possible to reach out and accommodate wishes and needs in all complex configurations of the blended family. If a husband has favoured his wife as much as possible, it means that his children, perhaps from an earlier marriage, will receive 1/8 of his estate as their indefeasible share – before 2008 this share was 1/3.

One final characteristic of Danish inheritance law is the right of a surviving spouse to retain the joint estate as undivided property with their joint lineal heirs. If the deceased spouse leaves lineal heirs of his or her own, særbørn (separate children) as it is termed in Danish, then their consent is needed. Undivided property means that the surviving spouse is in possession of the joint estate and can use it on an everyday basis, even if the value of the estate is thereby diminished. There are, however, rules against serious misuse of undivided property. It is not possible to bring the undivided property into a new marriage.

When the surviving spouse eventually dies, the joint estate will be divided among the heirs of both spouses. Because spouses inherit from each other and because step-children are not legal heirs, the share children in a blended family will receive according to the legal rules will differ considerably according to the order of death of the couple. This makes a testament important.

It is a recognised principle in Danish Inheritance Law that inheritance should eventually flow to the descendants of the deceased and further down the branches of the family following the same routes as blood is imagined to take in popular genealogy. As the Inheritance Act Committee wrote in its report to the Ministry of Justice, this is ‘natural’. In addition, the tradition of an indefeasible share, even if it has been diminished, means that the expectation of inheriting from one's parents is widespread in Denmark, and that it is regarded as natural, just and fair that one should do so.

Heirlooms and Inheritance in Blended Families

Blended families have many different configurations and trajectories. Some come into being when the children are toddlers, others bring a group of teenagers together, but often relations to step-parents, step-children and step-siblings are contingent. It is therefore a fragile moment when the connecting person dies. At this time everyday experiences of being a family collide with more formal definitions of family and kinship as expressed in the Inheritance Act. A man in his thirties recollected his huge disappointment and even bewilderment when he realised that his step-grandfather had opted him out and left him nothing at all. His name was not even mentioned in the list with provisions for the distributions of personal belongings. ‘I have known him as long as I can remember. I regarded him as my grandfather. I thought we were close.’ On the other hand, one young man told me that the poor relationship he had with his father made his sense of entitlement to an inheritance from him even stronger: ‘Even more so. He was never there for me when he was alive. His new family was more important. Now he will have to compensate.’ Another young man, who saw his father's substantial life insurance go to his father's new partner and their baby son, said ‘It's as if the law does not recognise that he is my father. I think the law should do that. The problem is that perhaps you get the feeling that your parent didn't love you – legally, that is.’ Ties of ‘blood’ become crucial in an inheritance situation, regardless of the concrete content of the relationship, and many people thus find it just and fair that they should inherit from their parents even if they have had a bad relationship with them.

Susan is a young woman in her late twenties and an only child. She was still a toddler when her parents divorced, after which she lived with her father. After some years her father moved in with his new partner and Susan joined her father in the new household. She describes her stepmother as a lively, warm, embracing divorcee with four children of her own. When recalling this time, Susan explains that she enjoyed the busy, noisy life full of friends and family. This life came to an end when her father fell ill and died of cancer when Susan was 18 and no longer a minor in a legal sense. Shortly before his death he married his partner, who thus became his legal heir together with Susan, his only child. ‘I went to the probate office with my stepmother, I knew nothing about inheritance rules, but I had complete confidence in her, she would never cheat me. And nor did she.’

Susan explained that she sometimes felt lonely in her father's big household: ‘I felt I was only on the margins of family life. Not very visible.’ After her father's death, Susan kept a good relationship with her stepmother and step-siblings, but time seems to have weakened or diluted their relationship now that the conjoining link is gone. ‘I meet them maybe once or twice a year. They stick more together as a family’, she explains.

I asked Susan if she had received anything besides money from her father.

You know the first time I thought about that was when I saw my stepbrother in my father's sweater. I thought: Hey, what's going on? What are you doing? He's not even your real father. But then I told myself it was okay, because he was young when my father moved in with his mother, and he (the stepbrother) was very close and fond of him. My stepmother did ask me once if there was anything that I wanted, but what could I say? It was like, you know, it was her home. Well, I didn't. I have only myself to blame.

In Susan's account it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between material things (like a sweater, a mug or Christmas decorations, with Christmas decorations being particularly loaded with emotional value, since Christmas is the family occasion above all) and when she talks about her father. Most telling, when she says it was ‘so weird that his sweater walked around’. The two are entangled and both seem to have been taken over by the bigger household of her father's second spouse.

Louise, who is now 25, was also brought up in a blended family. Her parents never married, and they split up when Louise was a few years old. As long as she can remember, she has lived with her mother and her mother's husband and their joint children – Louise's half-sisters. The separate child of the stepfather, Louise's stepbrother, was also part of the family. According to Louise, they were one big, happy family. The older stepbrother lived in the household every second week, whereas Louise went to live with her father a few days every fortnight. Louise's father had died recently, which is why she had agreed to take part in my interview research on the experiences of young people with inheritance rules and practices. She is grieving for her father, but in relation to the probate proceedings and distribution of the estate she has nothing to offer. Then she tells me that her maternal grandfather passed away recently, and that her mother received many of his personal belongings and has passed ‘a lot of funny male things’ on to Louise's stepbrother. Louise does not understand or agree with this. She underlines that the stepbrother has grandfathers of his own and says that she thinks her mother should have passed the things on to her daughters. ‘There might be boys in our branch of the family again in the future, and it would have been cool for them to have these old family things.’

Whereas her mother seems to think in terms of gender by regarding her stepson the only male child in her close family, the rightful heir to the ‘male things’, Louise thinks in terms of lineage and ‘blood’ relations. Apparently, when it comes to inheritance, Louise does not regard her stepbrother as part of the family.

When Susan spoke of her relationship with her stepbrothers, she also pointed out that she was not related to them by ‘blood’. However, when explaining the difference between her relationship to them, and their relationship to each other, she focused on the fact that her stepbrothers had grown up together in the same household (although they had different fathers) while she only entered this household when she was around seven years. The stepbrothers had shared memories from early childhood and their relationship had another time depth. To Susan this was the main reason she did not feel fully integrated into the family, which she regretted.

Many children and teenagers in blended families have two residences like Louise and her stepbrother, constantly moving between the households of their two parents. From the perspective of the permanent residents, such comings and goings occur in regular rhythms according to complicated arrangements, but the permanent residents are neither themselves part of this constant movement nor part of the daily life the children and teenagers live in another household. Such different experiences with residence and households have consequences for the ways in which kinning processes by nurture are experienced and entails ambivalent emotions when personal belongings are passed on in the blended family.

Undivided Property

Middle-aged couples in a second marriage often wish that the surviving spouse is able to continue their lifestyle, residence, and so on. This was also the argument for granting the surviving spouse a greater share of the inheritance and for enhancing testamentary powers. However, many couples do not feel this is enough to secure the future maintenance of the surviving spouse, whoever that may turn out to be. In addition, they want to keep the estate undivided. In order to do this, they need the consent of separate children.

Morten is in his late twenties. His parents divorced when he was in his early teens and his father remarried a few years later. His father and his second wife are now in their mid–late fifties. Morten recollects how he heard of their wish to retain undivided property:

My father and my stepmother called me and asked me to come by. They had something they wanted to talk to me about. I was puzzled, but it turned out to be about their will. I was asked to give my consent to some arrangement so that my stepmother could stay in the house if my father died. As least, that's how I understood it, I couldn't really take it in. I don't like to talk about death and stuff like that, so I simply said – ‘Umm, I don't know’. Then, they immediately said that it was perfectly okay, but that I should know that if I withheld my consent, I would only receive my indefeasible share. I could see my father was not pleased. Besides, the papers were ready to be signed. Then I said, ‘Yes, fine with me.’ What else could I say?

Actually, Morten could not explain the details of his consent and didn't know whether his consent was accompanied by a will securing his future interests. But as far as Morten knew, the main idea was that if his father died, his widowed wife would have the necessary financial means to stay in their present home.

Christina had also been asked to give her consent to leave her parents’ property undivided, but her situation was different. When Christina's mother died ten years ago, her father retained the property undivided and consequently Christina, who was then in her early twenties, did not receive her share of her deceased mother's estate. However, Christina's young, widowed father soon met another woman and wanted to take the undivided property with him into a new marriage. This was possible under certain conditions prior to the Inheritance Act 2008. Christina's consent would be followed by a last will and testament that safeguarded her interest in the case of her father's death. Christina could not explain these rather complicated arrangements but had declined and had not given her consent. As a result, her father had not remarried, although he did live with his new partner. On and off over the last ten years, the question has popped up and Christina's decision to withhold her consent has put a strain on family relationships. Christina explained her decision as follows: ‘No, I won't give my consent. I think it's only fair that I receive my inheritance from my mother if he marries. That's what the rules say. I think the rules are fine. Besides, my father and his partner can afford to pay me off, I'm sure. We can't agree, because they feel that everything belongs to my father and them, but that isn't how I feel. I don't like the idea that my mother's money will get mixed up with their money, even if I do receive my share in the end.’ I asked Christina how people had reacted to her decision. She smiled. ‘My family on my mother's side supports me. I don't discuss it with my family on my father's side, and my friends don't understand anything at all.’

Nanna lost her mother four years ago, when she was 22. It was a tremendous loss to Nanna, and she has been through a difficult period with grief and anxiety. After two years her father found himself a girlfriend. Nanna is happy for her father and likes the girlfriend very much. But some time ago, Nanna's sister's partner, who studies law, told Nanna that her father could not afford to dissolve the undivided property, whether he stayed in their childhood home or if he wanted to sell the house and buy another together with his new girlfriend, which was the plan. Nanna explains that she wants her father to feel good about the assets her mother left behind. ‘I can have it when he's no longer around and doesn't need it anymore.’ She goes on to explain the pain she feels when she thinks about a possible dissolution of her childhood home, then interrupts herself with deliberations about feeling that her father deserves happiness and a new life, which is also what her mother would have wanted. Nanna is clearly worried and in doubt. ‘What about all my mother's stuff? What will happen to it?’ Nanna can only wonder and guess. After a while, we return to the question of the undivided property and the legal fact that if Nanna's father wants to marry again, he will need the probate court to calculate and pay out his two daughters’ share of the undivided property he still holds with their deceased mother's estate. Now Nanna is determined, and tells me that she does not mind if they marry and his new wife perhaps later receives half of Nanna's father's estate in inheritance. ‘But clearly, she cannot inherit from my mother. I know for certain that my mother would have wanted us to have her money. We always came first. She wouldn't have liked her money to go to someone else. No, not my mother's money.’ But no matter how Nanna or Christina feel about their mothers’ money, a portion of the inheritance a widower receives from his deceased wife will later be passed on to a widow of a subsequent marriage.

Concepts of Kinship: Being or Becoming Kin?

Two different approaches to family and kinship seem to co-exist in the way people understand what it means to be family and to be close. The first approach emphasises mutuality and a shared common life, and in this approach many different types of relationship and different family ties are acknowledged. Important here is kinning by nurture. The other approach points to traditional definitions of kinship and to formal and normative understandings like the meaning of marriage and of parent–child relationships. Here kinning by law and by nature is in focus. Such different conceptions of the nature of close relationships have conflicting implications, and in an inheritance situation they come out in the open.

The provisions on tax in the Danish Probate Act is an instance of state intervention in intimate life and an example of how mutuality and the sharing of daily life in a common household is supported legally. All beneficiaries except a surviving spouse must pay inheritance tax on the estate above a certain allowance. This tax is graduated according to the closeness of the beneficiaries. The lowest tax is 15 percent for the closest group, termed ‘next of kin’. The term next of kin is taken to mean parents, children and step-children, their spouses and descendants, foster children, partners, and previous spouses. This delineation circles around traditional definitions of a family, but includes relations modelled on links such as those covered by the terms ‘step’ and ‘foster’. The sharing of a household – as is the case with partners as well as with step- and foster children – plays a crucial role. Consequently, in the context of probate tax you become next of kin by sharing everyday life. In addition to this 15 percent tax, all other inheritors including legal heirs such as siblings and nieces pay an extra 25 percent of the remaining amount (Selmer 2020).

The interplay of taxation and intestate rules creates an ambiguous and blurred picture of what kinds of relationships the state wishes to support as a kin relation. While the everyday next of kin is favoured in matters of taxation, step- or foster relations or cohabiting partners are not included among the legal heirs. In inheritance rules, the significance of formal kinship ties is maintained (Selmer 2020). Yet, discussions prior to the enhancement of the spousal share in 2008 did not refer to the importance of marriage as a central social institution, the enhancement was justified with reference to the life companionship of spouses (Ministry of Justice, Copenhagen 2006: 24, 59). The exact meaning of the notion of life companionship is not clear. When asked, people suggest that it means a lifelong companionship, such as many years of marriage. But in the context of the Danish Inheritance Act, life companionship means living together, mutual maintenance obligations and the daily sharing of a household. The inheritance rights of spouses are thus justified by the lived experience of being a couple and the sharing of intimate daily life (Selmer 2020).

Danish inheritance and probate acts try to weigh up the diverse ways people live and experience relatedness. Legal history concerning inheritance shows how legislators have tried to come to terms with the balance between the importance of the conjugal link vis-à-vis the importance of the link between generations These issues resemble the ones that were at the centre of the classical anthropological kinship debates between the descent and alliance theories of British structural-functionalism and Lévi-Strauss's structuralism respectively, concerning the priority of either consanguinity or affinity (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940; Lévi-Strauss 1949). Carsten and Hugh-Jones, writing on house-based societies, point out that the spousal couple are at the centre of the family and are also the meeting point for tensions between their respective kin – a source of both antagonism and unity (1995: 8). My claim here is that in modern blended families the crucial groups of kinsfolk are constituted not by the respective kin groups from which the conjugal couple originate, but by the children they bring into the marriage – their separate children. In the future, these children will constitute separate family lines with no common ancestors. In an inheritance situation, the first meeting point for tension in a blended family is between the surviving spouse and the separate children of the deceased. This is a structural conflict.

According to Janet Carsten (2020), in the last few decades anthropologists have become accustomed to viewing kinship in terms of two prominent and opposed models: ‘One, which we might characterize as broadly “conservative” emphasises being over doing, origins over attainment, the past over the future . . . The other, apparently more “radical” or open model, stresses the importance of processual and performative ways of becoming kin’ (2020: 321). Carsten concludes, however, that both versions are intrinsic to the processes of migration and mobility under study. Likewise, as shown in this article, members of blended families in Denmark experience and imagine both types of relatedness. Accordingly, concerns and commitments are multifaceted. However, in an inheritance situation, being kin takes priority. This is supported by the legal tradition and by the way material things (including money) connect people across time. When legislators as well as middle-class Danes maintain that children and descendants should inherit, they do so by referring to what is natural – in a way that echoes David Schneider's (1968) description of Euro-American kinship as a cultural system, namely the order of nature and the importance of ties of blood. These cultural assumptions and ideas of kinship described by Schneider are very similar to ideas prevalent in a Danish context. The right of children to an indefeasible share is a deeply rooted legal tradition and appears natural, or as people put it: ‘that's how it should be’. Hence, people's sense of justice and equity as to who should be considered legal heirs is very closely tied up with stipulations in the legal tradition, although not completely identical to them. Schneider's description of the affinal link being rooted in the order of law, on the other hand, does not resonate without dissonance. It is not the legal bond between spouses that justifies inheritance to spouses but their life companionship. Actually, in this understanding, the common life of spouses implies a kinning process not so much by law as by nurture.

The concept of kinning discloses the different ways members of a blended family are related and the consequences of this. To be kinned by nature and by law makes an inheritance to the next generation a legal and moral obligation; the life companionship between spouses, kinned by nurture, also entails legal obligations, while the relationship between step-parents and children and among step-siblings is undecided and open for individual considerations and concerns.

Conclusion: what will happen in the end?

Middle-aged people who are preoccupied with the future distribution of their estate talk about how to combine continued maintenance for a surviving spouse with a wish to finally pass something on to the younger generation in the end, as it is phrased – by which they mean following the death of the surviving spouse and the final dissolution of their companionship. But if one's separate children have given their prior consent to leave the property undivided, there is no way to completely ensure that anything will be left for them when the surviving spouse dies.

A survey of wills (Grønborg 2014) among couples with a blended family shows that the great majority say they want to distribute their estate equally among all the children in the blended family. But the term ‘equally’ has two meanings: the children either receive their inheritance in capita or per stirpes, and there is an enormous difference between the two in blended families. Ninety percent of all couples who have joint children as well as separate children of their own prefer to distribute their estate per stirpes, meaning that half the estate is distributed among the children of one spouse, and the other half distributed among the children of the other. Joint children thus receive from both. When all is said and done and both spouses are dead, the separate children of each spouse are seen as belonging to their own separate family.

People try to come to terms with the diversity of experiences and actual relationships in modern blended families and with the ambivalent concepts of kinship in the legal provisions as well as in people's conceptions. Different notions of kinship are applied in different situations; sometimes conflicting, sometimes overlapping, but always contestable.

Kinning and de-kinning involves a selection process in which some are selected and others opted out. When future inheritance and undivided property is discussed in families and in public, the perspective is often one-sided and seen from above, from the perspective of the conjugal unit (the new couple), with implicit power relations and conflicts being played down. From the perspective of the second generation, the favouring of the spouse in intestate rules and in practice does not have a deep resonance. They feel that assets and things should flow vertically to descendants as legal traditions and moral norms have traditionally prescribed. Their parents, on the other hand, are content that this will eventually happen. The second generation does not have much to say, and while some accept, others question the detour the estate takes to the spouse. Morten complied with his father's wish concerning undivided property, having received no advice about the consequences in terms of the future distribution of money or personal belongings. Christina's decision not to give her consent has proven expensive in terms of family relations, while Nanna worries what will happen to her mother's things and money if her father moves in with his new girlfriend. Susan experienced a fair and just devolution of her father's estate, yet she regrets how his things were left behind in her stepmother's home. But perhaps it is Louise who expresses the challenges of the blended family most cogently. Discussing the distribution of heirlooms from her grandfather, she says of her stepbrother: ‘He has a maternal grandfather of his own.’