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# Marginalized legal categories: Social inequality, family structure, and the laws of intestacy

## Details

**Authors** Megan Doherty Bea, Emily S. Taylor Poppe

**Year** 2021

**Publisher** Law & Society Review

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Law & Jurisprudence

**Secondary disciplines** Sociology, Economics

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12553) 
10.1111/lasr.12553

## In authors' words

### Abstract

The authors examine how legal classifications disadvantage certain groups by transforming social classifications into consequential legal categories, using intestacy laws as their case study. Their analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances reveals that more than 21% of American families have forms that are marginalized by intestacy classifications, with these family structures disproportionately affecting individuals of color and those with lower wealth. The research demonstrates that many individuals with these family structures hold assets but lack access to mechanisms to avoid intestacy laws, highlighting how legal classification contributes to social inequality.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To examine how intestacy statutes, the default legal rules governing inheritance when someone dies without a will, categorize family structures, and whether these legal category boundaries disadvantage certain kinds of families.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

U.S. households and families drawn from the Survey of Consumer Finances, classified by family structure and demographic characteristics.

### How they did it (methods)

Quantitative analysis of Survey of Consumer Finances data, classifying family structures according to whether intestacy law's categorical definitions recognize or marginalize them, then examining the distribution of marginalized structures by race and wealth.

### What they found (results)

More than 21 percent of American families have family structures that are marginalized by intestacy law's categorical definitions, and these marginalized structures are disproportionately found among people of color and households with lower wealth.

## Commentary

### In short

The finding illustrates the Distinctions pattern because a legal system's categorical boundary between recognized and unrecognized family forms produces unequal material consequences, and a Systems component in that family structures are classified as parts, such as partners, children, and kin arrangements, whose composition determines whether the whole unit is legally recognized.

**Patterns it shows** D, S

**Added** 2026-09-28

**How to cite this** Megan Doherty Bea, Emily S. Taylor Poppe (2021). Marginalized legal categories: Social inequality, family structure, and the laws of intestacy. Law & Society Review.