The Gender of Capital: How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality 0674271793, 9780674271791

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 The GENDER   of C A PITA L

 The GENDER   of C A PITA L How Families Perpetuate Wealth In­equality

Céline Bessière Siby lle G o ll ac Translated by

Juliette Rogers

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Mas­s a­c hu­s etts, & London, ­E ngland / 2023

 Copyright © 2023 by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac First published in French as Le genre du capital: Comment la famille reproduit les inégalités, © Éditions La Découverte, Paris, 2020 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Cover design by Tim Jones Cover photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts courtesy of Getty Images 978-0-674-29280-2 (EPUB) 978-0-674-29279-6 (PDF) Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-0-674-27179-1 (alk. paper)

To Amélina, Faial, Joan, and Toni

Contents

Preface to the En­glish Edition  ix

Introduction  1 1. The ­Family as an Economic Institution  15 2. ­Family Reproduction versus ­Women’s Wealth  39 3. Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  71 4. Sexist Accounting u ­ nder Cover of Egalitarian Law  105 5. Tax Avoidance and ­Family Peace at the Expense of ­Women  6. Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth In­equality?  157 7. The Par­tic­u­lar Hardships of Proletarian Ex-­Wives  186 Conclusion  212 Statistical Appendixes  223 Ethnographic and Archival Sources  263 Notes 269 Acknowl­edgments  311 Index 315

133

Preface to the En­glish Edition

This book first came out in France in February 2020, a month before the government ordered the population to shelter in place to slow the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. In France, as in many other countries, the pandemic and its management by public authorities accentuated and exposed inequalities between families and within families. Lockdowns exacerbated the effects of housing in­equality: living conditions varied according to the size of the primary residence and the possibility to move to a secondary home. School closures made parents’ ability to help their ­children with their schoolwork crucial, deepening the divide between white-­collar parents who could work from home and essential workers, more often ­women, who w ­ ere left to solve an impossible equation: caring for their c­ hildren at home while ­going to work. ­Women performed the bulk of the additional domestic labor that resulted from the lockdowns and the pandemic. In par­tic­u­lar, they cared for ­children, the el­derly, and sick persons, leading to a significant degradation of their own (remote) working and living conditions. ­Women ­were more likely to take mea­sures to stop working, which increased the ­career and income inequalities between men and ­women. Being shut into the domestic sphere increased the incidence of domestic vio­lence, of which ­women and c­ hildren are the primary victims. The pandemic thus laid bare the material dimensions of gender and class inequalities in the f­ amily.1 This was also the goal of our book: to document the relations of economic domination that are produced by the heteronormative ­family and ix

x   Preface to the English Edition

to focus the analy­sis of the gender order and the class society on ­these relations. Getting married (or not), opening a joint bank account (or not), reducing employment hours to part-­time, keeping the h ­ ouse ­after a separation, paying or receiving child support, receiving a financial gift from a ­family member, inheriting a home, planning the transfer of a f­amily business—­ these are generally seen as ­either personal choices or legally necessary technical decisions. But as feminist studies have shown for de­cades, the personal is po­liti­cal. Our book shows that t­ hese practices are caught up in relations of domination and contribute to the reproduction of in­equality. In France, our book attracted an academic public in sociology, social anthropology, economics, philosophy, history, and law, but it also drew a broader professional and activist public interested in the continuities between economic in­equality and gendered vio­lence. Our demonstration relies on the analy­sis of ethnographic materials collected in ­family settings, courts, and the offices of ­legal professionals in France, as well as on our own analy­sis of French statistical data on h ­ ouse­hold assets. Certain that the mechanisms revealed ­here ­were not specific to France, from the outset we included in the book international statistical comparisons and examples. Our descriptions of how a bakery or a Cognac wine-­grape farm is passed down from ­father to son might seem to be specifically French stories. Yet with the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-­First C ­ entury and the empirical demonstration of the rising weight of inheritance in all con­temporary socie­ties, the relevance of our study of the mechanisms of wealth accumulation and transfer within the f­amily in diverse social milieus became evident.2 Mike Savage has shown a shift in the connection between cultural and economic capitals in the structure and reproduction of social spaces ­today, relative to Pierre Bourdieu’s description of the 1970s in Distinction.3 Once again it has become necessary to have inherited wealth in order to occupy dominant positions in h ­ uman socie­ties—­educational degrees are no longer enough. It’s no accident that the mechanisms we describe resemble the southwestern French or northern Algerian farming socie­t ies that Bourdieu, as an anthropologist, described in The Logic of Practice, based on research from the 1950s. They are similar b­ ecause the past is overtaking the pre­sent as economic inheritance returns to such prominence, well documented by Piketty, an economist, and Savage, a



Preface to the English Edition  xi

sociologist. Some families have an enduring mono­poly over economic capital and pass it down from one generation to the next. We demonstrate that ­t hese mechanisms for the reproduction of the class society are still gendered. They are based on the exploitation of the ­labor of ­women and their exclusion from property owner­ship, first exposed by materialist and Marxist feminists in the 1970s.4 Our work is nevertheless grounded in twenty-­first-­century France. Our research was conducted in major cities and in small towns, with CEOs of publicly traded companies, real estate agents, teachers, and gig-­economy workers. We did fieldwork with men and w ­ omen of all ages: long-­married, in a marriage-­like relationship, freshly divorced, with or without ­children; some the head of a single-­parent ­house­hold, ­others a parent in a stepfamily, and so on. Con­temporary French society is characterized by formally egalitarian civil law that s­ topped discriminating against w ­ omen in ­matters of wealth half a c­ entury ago. As elsewhere in Eu­rope, France has a strong welfare state that offers a safety net to the poorest, especially to w ­ omen raising ­children alone. French society is typified by a normative frame that highly values equality between men and ­women, especially in education and the professional sphere. Our book demonstrates that despite this normative frame, which is one of the most egalitarian in the world, economic inequalities between w ­ omen and men quietly continue. Worse yet, while income inequalities stagnate in France, inequalities in wealth between men and ­women have expanded in recent de­cades. Used interchangeably by economists, “wealth,” “assets,” and “capital” mean the total value of a person’s property at a given time, composed of real estate, financial assets, or businesses. We use Piketty’s definition in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Contrary to the Marxist definition, Piketty does not limit the notion of capital to assets used directly in the production process or for which the owner expects a return. His definition includes land and natural resources over which owners could exercise their rights, wealth as a value reserve (gold, for instance), and rights to the use of assets (like a vacation home). In this book, “capital,” as “wealth,” consists of economic assets whose value can be conserved or accumulated and whose final fruition (through sale) can guarantee future cash flow. It is virtually impossible to document the gender wealth gap in most countries ­because survey-­based public statistics and tax rec­ords gather wealth data at the h ­ ouse­hold scale,

xii   Preface to the English Edition

making it impossible to mea­sure inequalities between members of a ­house­hold or track how they change over time. Our work shows the extent to which the egalitarian norm, which has now become a myth of established equality, produces economic in­equality in practice. We give several examples of this in the book. ­Because ­women have access to the l­ abor market and are supposed to have their own c­ areers, it can seem less legitimate that they request financial compensation at the time of separation. Before and a­ fter breakup, however, they are still the ones who do the bulk of domestic labor (particularly the work of looking a­ fter ­children), to the detriment of their ­c areers and to the advantage of the ­career of their former husband or partner. Prior to arriving at separation, many different-­sex ­couples come up with arrangements based on a presupposition of equality: they split expenses fifty-­fifty, choose the separation of property when they get married (each managing their own assets), or decide not to get married at all. Feminists have rightly described marriage as a patriarchal institution. In France, married ­women used to have no power over the management of the ­couple’s assets, or even their own, and they could not open a bank account without their husband’s authorization. Although on paper they owned half of marital assets, they had no effective control over them. It was only in 1965 that married ­women acquired the right to manage marital assets equally with married men. This was the same period when marriage hit an all-­time low in France. By marrying less, w ­ omen s­ topped benefiting from the power­ful equalizer of marriage, as well as the economic protections it offered in case of divorce or widowhood. Th ­ ese changes in ­family law and its uses occurred at dif­fer­ent paces and time frames in other countries. Our work emphasizes the importance of this ­legal context for understanding con­temporary developments in the economic inequalities between men and w ­ omen. Documenting the transformation of “law on the books” must not distract from studying law in action. In this book we focus on two key moments in the circulation and distribution of f­ amily wealth: inheritance proceedings and separations of cohabiting ­couples. We study them first from the families’ perspective, in ­family case studies that allow us to identify how ­family strategies of accumulation, distribution, and transfer of wealth rely on gendered and eco­nom­ically inegalitarian roles. ­These family strategies of social reproduction unfavorable to ­women seem poorly compatible



Preface to the English Edition  xiii

with ­today’s formally egalitarian French law, an observation that prompted us to do further research on the everyday practices of judges, ­lawyers, and notaires (­legal professionals whose duties notably include drafting w ­ ills and marriage contracts) to understand the tenor of their interventions at the time of separation or estate partitioning. Our book makes the connection between French specificities in how ­these professions are or­ga­nized and the ways in which they participate in the reproduction of class and gender inequalities. We show that although ­these inequalities emerge in the ­family, they are legitimized and formalized by the professionals charged with supporting heirs, separating p ­ eople, and implementing the law. Our research shows the utility of bringing together private and public materials collected from families, family-­law professionals, and the courts. It also combines ethnographic materials with original statistical analyses of ­house­hold asset surveys and ­legal archives. Only the combination of all ­these forms of data made it pos­si­ble for us to understand how the reproduction of the social order is rooted in the f­ amily. ­Doing research on private life raises ethical questions. With their full consent, we observed the f­ amily lives of some in­for­mants over the course of several years—we saw them enter into relationships, separate, discuss inheritance with their b­ rothers and ­sisters. We interviewed their loved ones and collected personal documents and private files, making it pos­ si­ble to confront sometimes contradictory perspectives on a single f­ amily ­matter. We ­were also able to observe ­lawyers’ meetings with their clients and read notaires’ files, provided that their content be made anonymous. We had to figure out how to render our findings public while respecting our engagement to confidentiality and ensuring that our writings would not harm the ­people who helped us in our research, which we did by withholding certain details or analyzing certain data at the properly aggregate level. The growing specialization of the social sciences generally leads to the collection and analy­sis of a disjointed body of research materials. Historians and demographers describe the historical transformations of the ­family as an institution. Sociologists of the ­family who specialize in marriage and marriage-­like relations are rarely interested in intergenerational transmission, and vice versa. Sociolegal scholars research differential access to the law according to social class and the role of ­legal professionals in the reproduction of social inequalities, while t­ hose specialized in gender and

xiv   Preface to the English Edition

judging pay less heed to the work of l­awyers and notaires. Some l­egal scholars study the complexities of national fiscal law that dictates the framework for economic transfers in the f­amily, while o­ thers specialize in the comparison of civil laws that determine the ­legal framework for kinship, separations, and estate distribution of transnational families. Socioeconomists focus on quantifying the economic inequalities between ­women and men. In contrast, we hope that the translation of this book into En­glish ­will renew the dialogue within the social sciences, between distinct subfields and methodological orientations, and between dif­fer­ent national settings. We also hope to encourage ­others to build upon our work. We demonstrate the significant role of heteronormativity in the functioning of cap­i­ tal­ist socie­ties. The transfer of f­ amily wealth is based on c­ hildren being assigned to binary sex categories. The mechanisms of wealth accumulation and circulation are based on heterosexual coupling, characterized by the overlap of a difference in assigned sex, feelings of love, sexual activity, and procreation. Studying the ­family trajectories, asset histories, and ­legal experiences of LGBTQI+ ­people would certainly provide a fuller understanding of the heteronormative under­pinnings of the social order. We have also shown, albeit briefly, that the pro­cesses of wealth accumulation and their ­legal constraints are caught up in racial relations. For example, international migration disrupts ­family economic arrangements and strategies of reproduction. L ­ egal professionals may racially categorize p ­ eople who are trying to implement such arrangements and strategies, with significant consequences on how they treat their cases. Both of ­these leads deserve deeper study. We are desperately lacking the statistical data necessary to elaborate on wealth inequalities caught up in issues of racial categorizations and sexual orientation in France. Such data does exist in other countries to a certain extent. We hope that reading this book w ­ ill prompt numerous fruitful discussions, spurring the development of methodological tools and the production of knowledge that ­will allow further exploration of how intimate relationships structure the wealth inequalities that are at the core of con­ temporary society.

Introduction

H

er name is ingrid. Her f­ amily name, Levavasseur, is fairly common in Normandy and means “the vassal of a lord who is a vassal himself.” Ingrid was born in 1987 in a rural area near the meanders of the Seine River on its way to the sea. She and her three siblings ­were raised by their m ­ other, a former cleaning ­woman who became a special needs caregiver. Her violent and alcoholic f­ather was mostly out of the picture. At 16, Ingrid quit high school and left home. She went through a string of ser­vice jobs—­waitress, cashier, telephone operator—­got married, had two ­children. When she was only 24, a year ­after the birth of her second child, Ingrid and her husband divorced. She worked nights as a firefighter while studying to become a nurse’s aide, although she r­ eally wanted to be a nurse but ­couldn’t afford the three-­year program. In 2018 she earned 1,250 euros a month plus 95 euros in housing assistance and 200 euros in child support. She had sole custody of her ­children, aged 8 and 13 years. They lived in a small rented ­house in the town of Pont-­de-­l’Arche, and she had to pay someone to look ­a fter them in the eve­nings while she worked in Rouen, twenty kilo­meters away. The f­ amily vacationed three days a year at a campground near Mont-­St-­Michel. Ingrid had a hard time making ends meet. She barely managed to buy her kids new sneakers and keep the fridge stocked, and she had long since ­stopped spending money on herself: no haircuts, no sports, no dining out. She had no time for herself, anyway, 1

2   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

since she was on her own only ­every other weekend when the kids visited their ­father. In the autumn of 2018, Ingrid Levavasseur became a national figure in France as an activist in the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement.1 Her long red hair and Botticellian features made her readily recognizable in news reports, where she gave a face to de­cades of statistics that described the poverty of ­women ­running single-­parent ­house­holds. In 2019 she announced that she was creating a support center to provide lodging, child care, and activities for ­women raising c­ hildren alone. The Gilets Jaunes movement brought the media spotlight to working-­ class ­people it had previously ignored. Headlines focused on ­women who camped out at traffic circles and highway toll plazas and led demonstrations u ­ nder the sharp eyes of the aggressive police.2 A number of them ­were raising their c­ hildren alone and had a hard time balancing the ­family bud­get. They told reporters their stories—­stories of unpaid child support and never-­ending paperwork to apply for ­limited public assistance. They spoke of their constant strug­gle to pay the bills, of putting their ­children’s needs before their own. They spoke of unemployment, part-­time jobs, having to take on as many work hours as pos­si­ble. Some of ­these ­women had given up on wage employment altogether and had become self-­ employed, but it d ­ idn’t pay any better. And then t­ here w ­ ere retired w ­ omen, many of them w ­ idows, with meager pensions. In poor families, money prob­lems are ­women’s prob­lems.3 Her name is MacKenzie. She was born to a well-­off ­family in San Francisco in 1970, her ­father a wealth man­ag­er and her ­mother a homemaker. She got a degree in En­glish from Prince­ton University, which she chose so she could study with Toni Morrison and become a novelist. In the early 1990s, MacKenzie Scott was working at the investment firm of D. E. Shaw & Co. in New York, a job that paid the bills and left her time to write fiction. ­There she met her ­future husband, Jeff Bezos, a fellow Prince­ton alumnus with a computer science degree who had climbed to the position of se­nior vice-­president of the firm. He was the one who hired MacKenzie, and his office was next to hers. They married in 1993, when she was 23 and he 30. The following year they moved to the West Coast, where they rented a ­house in the suburbs of Seattle. During their cross-­ country drive, with MacKenzie at the wheel and Jeff in the passenger seat,

Introduction  3

the ­couple came up with a business plan for a new com­pany that would sell books over the internet. The following year, Amazon was born. MacKenzie was fully involved in the business’s beginnings. She did the accounting, attended hiring and strategy sessions, and even chipped in sending early packages out via UPS: “I was t­ here when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many o­ thers in the converted garage, the basement ware­house closet, the barbecue-­scented offices, the Christmas-­rush distribution centers, and the door-­desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history,” she recalled. The c­ ouple’s first child was born in 1999, to be followed by three o­ thers. MacKenzie and Jeff moved into a $10 million ­house. MacKenzie started working less for the com­pany and delayed her ambition of becoming a novelist to take care of the four ­children (she l­ater said that she could have hired nannies but she preferred to look a­ fter them herself, even ­going so far as to homeschool them at times). Her first novel, the fruit of ten years’ work, was fi­nally published in 2005 and won an American Book Award. She published a second novel in 2013 that was well received by critics but had modest sales, a ­couple thousand copies, in part ­because bookstores refused to carry the novel to protest the damage of Amazon’s expanding empire on brick-­and-­mortar shops.4 On January 9, 2019, MacKenzie and Jeff Bezos announced the end of their marriage of twenty-­five years in a jointly signed Tweet: “We want to make ­people aware of a development in our lives. . . . ​[ We] have de­cided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends. . . . ​We’ve had such a ­great life together as a married c­ ouple, and we also see wonderful f­ utures ahead, as parents, friends, partners in ventures and proj­ects, and as individuals pursuing ventures and adventures.”5 The message portraying an amicable divorce was addressed to financial markets, investors, and shareholders, rather than to their friends. The f­ uture of the world’s largest private fortune was at stake: the c­ ouple’s net worth of over $130 billion included 16 ­percent of Amazon’s capital. In Washington State, where the ­couple lived and worked, divorce laws stipulate that all assets acquired during the marriage must be divided into two equal parts. Hundreds of newspaper articles worldwide expressed concern over the f­ uture of the Bezos fortune, a large portion of which consisted of their companies: Amazon, the aerospace com­pany Blue Origin, and the Washington Post. ­There was a

4   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

chance that 8 ­percent of Amazon could fall into the hands of a ­woman, which might make Jeff Bezos lose control of the com­pany, and the mere possibility made the markets anxious.6 Three months ­later, some details of the divorce ­were made public by MacKenzie, once again on Twitter: “Grateful to have finished the pro­cess of dissolving my marriage with Jeff, with support from each other and every­one who reached out to us in kindness and looking forward to next phase as co-­parents and friends. Happy to be giving him all my interest in the Washington Post and Blue Origin and 75% of our Amazon stock plus voting control of my shares to support his continued contributions with the teams of ­t hese incredible companies.”7 Jeff Bezos would remain the primary shareholder of Amazon and the richest man on earth. In wealthy families, looking ­after capital is a man’s prerogative.8

Wealth In­equality, Class, and Gender An ocean and billions of dollars separate the lives of Ingrid Levavasseur and MacKenzie Scott. Ingrid Levavasseur’s wealth is likely ­limited to her car and modest savings, prob­ably no more than a ­couple thousand euros, whereas MacKenzie Scott left her marriage with $35 billion. As Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century revealed for all to see, wealth in­equality is a central characteristic of con­temporary capitalism.9 Much stronger than income in­equality, wealth in­equality describes the ever-­ widening chasm separating the worlds of MacKenzie Scott and Ingrid Levavasseur. According to the 2021 World In­equality Report, published by the World In­equality Lab at the Paris School of Economics, the richest 10 ­percent of the global population receives about half (52 ­percent) of total global income, while the bottom 50 ­percent receives only 8.5 ­percent. The wealthiest 10 ­percent owns more than three-­quarters (76 ­percent) of global wealth, whereas the bottom 50 ­percent owns a mere 2 ­percent. In the early twenty-­first ­century, differences in living conditions and social status are increasingly linked to the transfer of economic capital in the ­family. This capital is crucial to obtaining housing in a context where homeownership is widespread and a mark of social distinction (if one can afford the “right” address). As the gig economy rises and stable wage-­earning occupations tend to dis­appear with the crumbling of the wage-­earning society, ­family economic support is ever more indispensable to ­going into

Introduction  5

business, keeping a business afloat, securing loans, and receiving supplementary revenue from ­family assets.10 Inequalities between schools and the staggering price of a college education mean that f­ amily savings have also become essential for the accumulation of educational capital.11 More generally, it is known that a f­ amily’s standard of living influences its ­children’s success at school from a very young age.12 In other words, Ingrid Levavasseur’s insecure economic situation w ­ ill prob­ably affect her c­ hildren’s educational f­utures and reduce their economic opportunities. Even if her ­daughter and son excel in school and find stable jobs with good incomes, it w ­ ill take them quite some time to start accumulating their own capital. Meanwhile, MacKenzie Scott’s three sons and ­daughter ­will likely have ready access to the best schools and colleges and ­w ill prob­ably never have to borrow money to buy a home, start a business, or make promising investments, even if they are mediocre students. The Gilets Jaunes movement and the resurgence of an ultra-­rich class both illustrate that the accumulation of economic capital has once again become a defining force of the social class structure. Karl Marx showed that poverty and wealth result from relations of production, but the workplace and the markets do not have a mono­poly on production—­the ­family is another site where domestic relations of production lead to the accumulation and transfer of economic wealth. ­Because of his focus on industrial wage ­labor, Marx tended to overlook the reproduction of the ­labor force necessary for capitalistic accumulation, thus limiting perception of the extent to which capitalism exploits w ­ omen.13 In the 1970s, Marxist and materialist feminists began to demonstrate that ­family wealth was accumulated and passed along through the exploitation of married ­women’s unpaid ­labor.14 W ­ omen had very l­ imited rights to this capital at the time and ­were unwitting participants in the reproduction of the social hierarchy. How do ­things stand t­ oday, when many socie­ties profess ­legal equality for spouses and for men and w ­ omen in general? Ingrid Levavasseur and MacKenzie Scott are obviously worlds apart, but their lives do have some key points in common. During their relationships, they ­were on the front line for child-rearing and ­running the home. Both ­women sacrificed some of their professional dreams, putting off or giving up on cherished plans. Their professional lives ­were chopped into a succession of small jobs, rather than aligned in a ­career. Both ­women also went

6   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

through difficult divorces with the help of l­egal professionals who showered them with ­legal advice, although Ingrid prob­ably had one ­lawyer and MacKenzie a ­whole ­legal team. For ­these ­women, divorce was synonymous with impoverishment relative to their former situations. The 100 euros per child, per month, that Ingrid receives in child support does not come even close to covering the costs entailed. Who could possibly h ­ ouse, feed, clothe, and care for a child in France t­oday for such a sum? As for MacKenzie Scott, who legitimately owned half of a colossal fortune at the time of her divorce, she eventually settled for a much smaller share, and left the majority in the hands of her ex-­husband. The situation of ­these ­women at each end of the social spectrum raises fundamental questions. Why is it that w ­ omen are usually the ones to deal with money prob­lems in the working classes, while economic power is monopolized by men higher up on the social ladder? Historically, almost everywhere in the world, l­egal discrimination has hindered w ­ omen from accumulating wealth. Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Eu­ro­ pean and North American socie­ties seemed to have achieved formal gender equality in worker’s rights, ­family rights, and property rights, yet despite this l­egal pro­gress, men still accumulate far more wealth than ­women do.

­Women’s Work, Men’s Incomes ­ ere are some who claim that ­women earn less than men ­because they Th work less, so it merits to be said that ­women have always worked as much as men, if not more.15 One obvious characteristic of ­women’s work in a number of economic sectors (agriculture, the trades, commerce, industry) is its invisibility and lack of l­egal or financial recognition. Reproductive l­abor, primarily performed by ­women in a ­family setting, is the archetype of unpaid work that never gets recognized as such.16 House­hold production is not counted in the large statistical aggregates mea­sur­ing national production, b­ ecause national wealth only includes activities that produce goods and ser­vices for commercial exchange and ser­vices provided by the public administration.17 A child-­care provider paid to care for a child contributes to the national income, but a m ­ other who does the same work at home does not. If ­house­hold production w ­ ere taken into account, the gross domestic product

Introduction  7

would have been 33 ­percent higher in France, 63 ­percent higher in the United Kingdom, and 43 ­percent higher in Germany in 2010; in the United States, it would have been 23 ­percent higher in 2014.18 This unpaid and invisible h ­ ouse­hold production is done largely by ­women. Over the long term, time-­use studies in Eu­rope and North Amer­ i­ca have shown that despite converging labor-­force participation rates and time spent performing paid work, ­women still perform much more unpaid work than men.19 ­Women in Sweden and the United States spent an average of three hours per day on h ­ ouse­work (cooking, cleaning, laundry and ironing, home repairs and gardening, sewing and mending, shopping, adult caregiving, h ­ ouse­hold administration, and transportation) at the beginning of the studied period (around the late 1980s). For the same tasks and period, ­women in France and the United Kingdom performed four hours of ­house­work daily, and w ­ omen in Italy and the Netherlands five hours daily. During the same period, men contributed between one hour (Italy) and two and a half hours (Sweden) to such tasks. Roughly a quarter ­century ­later, in the 2010s, ­women have reduced their ­house­work hours by 20–25 ­percent in all studied countries except Italy, but this reduction has not been balanced by an increase in men’s h ­ ouse­work time, which holds steady when it ­hasn’t 20 slightly decreased. ­Women likewise consistently devote more time to child care than men, including routine and interactive child care, help with homework, and transportation. Although men in all concerned countries have spent an increasing amount of time on child care since 1980s, ­there is a concurrent trend ­toward more-­intensive parenting by ­mothers. In the 2010s, ­women in Sweden spent 30 ­percent more time on child care than men, and w ­ omen in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States twice as much.21 In Sweden, the country that comes the closest to the equal sharing of unpaid work, ­women spent an average of one hour a day more than men on unpaid work in 2010; this figure r­ ose to two hours in the United States and the United Kingdom, and four hours in Italy.22 The same year, w ­ omen in France who w ­ ere in a c­ ouple and had c­ hildren worked a total of 54 hours per week: 34 hours of unpaid domestic ­labor and 20 hours of paid employment. Men in the same h ­ ouse­holds worked only 51 hours—3 hours less per week. Men devoted, on average, 18 hours per week to unpaid domestic ­labor, and 33 hours to paid work.23 Though ­women worked slightly longer hours, they ­were paid much less overall.

8   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

­ ese figures are based on the reported daily schedules of surveyed men Th and ­women. The totals do not account for the fragmentation of ­women’s domestic labor and professional work, which is constantly interrupted ­because ­women must always be available to ­others.24 ­Women always bear the domestic ­mental load, even while they are at their paying jobs.25 ­Mothers are the first to be contacted by schools and daycare providers when ­children are sick. ­Women often multitask (house­cleaning while taking care of the ­children, for example) and must be ready to interrupt what they are ­doing at any moment.26 In contrast, men’s work, w ­ hether professional or at home (house repairs, gardening, sometimes cooking), is more clearly delineated in time and space. Income in­equality is the most vis­i­ble of a wide range of gendered disparities that exist in families and in the l­abor market, across the social spectrum. ­Women are concentrated in sectors that pay less, particularly education, medical support, and home care ser­vices. ­Because of their ­family responsibilities, ­women are often employed in part-­time jobs and their ­careers take a slower track.27 In many sectors, the glass ceiling prevents them from reaching the best-­paying positions.28 ­These ­factors explain why w ­ omen’s earnings in France and elsewhere in the world are, on average, one-­quarter lower than men’s.29 Even with all other ­things being equal (the same age, se­niority, job sector, position, years of employment, and so on), the ­labor market still discriminates against ­women by paying them wages estimated to be 10.5 ­percent lower than t­ hose of their male counter­parts.30 Countries worldwide are currently tackling unequal incomes with professional equality legislation. But even if ­women do one day get equal pay for equal work, it w ­ ouldn’t solve their economic plight. Th ­ ere is still a form of economic in­equality between ­women and men that does not appear on most po­liti­cal agendas and statistical radars, though it shapes individuals’ socioeconomic fates and is passed down from one generation to the next.

From Unequal Pay to Unequal Wealth The distribution of wealth by gender has recently received some attention.31 Given that w ­ omen, on average, live a few years longer than men, that they receive lower public pensions (the gender pension gap for mandatory pensions is about 34 ­percent in OECD countries), and that a growing number of single-­head female ­house­holds live below the poverty line, the conserva-

Introduction  9

tive assumption that ­women could and should rely on their husbands’ wealth appears outdated.32 Documenting the gendered distribution of assets is difficult b­ ecause joint owner­ship is often presumed, masking the real­ity of individual owner­ship and control of assets. Most of the data on wealth is collected at the level of the ­house­hold (­either through surveys or tax data) rather than at the individual level. ­Because of this, research on the gender wealth gap is often focused on comparisons of female-­and male-­ headed ­house­holds with only one adult, or obviously individualized components of wealth such as pensions.33 ­These studies have made valuable contributions—­showing, for example, that single ­women with ­children have the lowest overall asset levels—­but data collection at the h ­ ouse­hold level makes it harder to assess and explain the size of the gender wealth gap. Assets accumulated by men or ­women in the same ­house­hold tend to be conflated by data-­collection methods. High-­quality wealth surveys describing each member of a ­house­hold’s individual owner­ship of, access to, and control of assets are hard to come by, but ­there are two notable exceptions. The first is a German socio­ economic panel study that mea­sures a significant gender wealth gap in Germany, not only between single men and single w ­ omen but also within 34 unmarried and married ­couples. Using the net worth for the working­age population of Germany in 2002–2012, the study found that the gender wealth gap was still high and in ­f avor of men, although it had closed somewhat over the de­cade, from about 35,500 euros to 30,700 euros.35 This significant gap was attributed to the large gender pay gap and ­women’s low ­labor market participation, and its reduction was credited to the greater participation of ­women in the l­abor market in the 2000s.36 The second survey was conducted more recently in France, and its findings are even more surprising. Statistical data from the French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine) conducted by the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) shows that the gender wealth gap is widening steadily in ­favor of men in France, rising from 9 ­percent in 1998 to 16  ­percent in 2015.37 This increase concerns both single w ­ omen and single men (shooting up from 8 ­percent to 23 ­percent) and c­ ouples (from 8 ­percent to 13 ­percent).38 The same study also shows that men own more capital than ­women, regardless of the form (housing, land, or financial or professional assets). In 2015, the average wealth gap between w ­ omen and men was estimated at 24,000 euros, spanning a wide variety of situations,

10   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

from modest differences between working-­class men and w ­ omen (where neither partner accumulates much wealth) to vast gender gaps in the upper classes. But the gender wealth gap is still poorly documented ­because unsuitable units of analy­sis make it very difficult to mea­sure. How does one estimate the individual wealth of a man or a w ­ oman when they jointly own property as a c­ ouple, and when surveys are conducted at a ­house­hold level, grouping together all p ­ eople who live u ­ nder the same roof? This difficulty prob­ably explains the absence of gender as a variable in the 696 pages of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-­First C ­ entury.39 To document the gender wealth gap, it is necessary to have precise individual statistical data, but that is not enough to fully understand how the gender wealth gap is created and perpetuated; one must delve into the intricacies of f­ amily relations.

Investigating the Production of Wealth In­equality in the F ­ amily The primary cause of the gender wealth gap is to be found in the everyday strug­gles of ­family life, rather than in Wall Street dealings. This in­equality is produced by the unspoken practices of men and ­women when they act as spouses and partners, ­fathers and ­mothers, ­daughters and sons, ­brothers and s­ isters. It takes dif­fer­ent forms according to social class, depending on ­whether the wealth consists of debts, furniture, a few thousand euros in a savings account, or a suburban h ­ ouse, a Pa­ri­sian apartment, the ­family’s country home, a timeshare, stocks in a com­pany, works of art. We need a new perspective on the f­amily in order to see this in­equality; the f­amily must be treated as an economic institution like any other—an institution that not only produces wealth but also controls it and manages its circulation and valuation through what we call ­family wealth arrangements. As sociologists, we have been studying the ordinary economic arrangements of French families of all social classes for more than twenty years. ­These nearly imperceptible arrangements can take many forms, from a ­little help with an unforeseen expense to security deposits, interest-­free loans, gifts, inheritance, references, paying for college, caring for an aging parent, moving in to help out during an emergency, providing child care or f­ree lodging, paying child or spousal support, and so on. ­Because ­family relations are considered private, the open discussion of their economic aspects often makes p ­ eople uncomfortable.

Introduction  11

We had to use a combination of methods and approaches to study the topic. First, we conducted in-­depth ­family case studies with repeated observations of and interviews with groups of kin. ­These relatives invited us into their daily lives as well as to more exceptional f­amily events such as weddings, funerals, and holidays. They sometimes invited us to stay in their homes. Some entrusted us with private ­family rec­ords, including notarized and civil certificates, correspondence, and photo­graphs. From 1997 to 2005, Céline Bessière used this method to study how ­family businesses ­were transferred in the cognac-­ producing area in southwestern France. During roughly the same period, Sibylle Gollac investigated the real-­estate strategies of families from a variety of social backgrounds, following several of them for over fifteen years. We described ­family economic transfers in detail when we wrote ­these ­family case studies. We noted, for instance, that b­ rothers and ­sisters sometimes had very dif­fer­ent recollections of the settlement of their parents’ estate: they did not count the same assets, assign them the same values, or have the same conceptions of what a fair inheritance might mean. In fact, ­family economic arrangements are always about more than money and property. Viviana Zelizer has shown them to be “intimate transactions” mixing economic transfer with emotions, moral obligations, values, princi­ ples of fairness, and reputational stakes, all embedded in a long history of interpersonal relations.40 Men and ­women ­a ren’t in the same position in this pro­cess, as they are not socialized to act in the same way or to have the same aspirations; f­ amily expectations are not the same for w ­ omen and men. ­These ­family histories provide the substance of this book. They allow a close reading of ­family members’ interpretations of ­family economic arrangements in their everyday lives.41 In order to be able to tell their stories in the necessary detail, we changed in­for­mants’ names to protect their privacy, and we changed certain place names as well.42 As rich as they are, ­family case studies alone are not enough to examine the gender wealth gap from all sides. In order to generalize our findings and compare families across social classes, we also analyzed statistical data from the French Wealth Survey. We did new field research to round out our understanding of ­family wealth arrangements in all their diversity, focusing this time on two extraordinary moments that formalize t­hese arrangements and lay them out in explicit detail: the breakdown of a marriage or long-­term relationships, and estate planning and settlement.

12   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

Breaking up and inheriting are distinctive f­amily events ­because they are so highly codified ­under f­ amily, fiscal, and civil law. Relatives may have to meet with l­egal professionals who work more or less diligently with them throughout their encounter with the law, although the likelihood and tone of this encounter varies considerably according to their social class, race, and gender. This phase of research brought us into new worlds: ­legal offices and f­ amily courts. The resulting findings contribute to sociolegal lit­ er­a­ture exploring how experiences of civil justice may reflect, deepen, or make up for in­equality, and can furthermore endorse and conceal it.43 We answered Rebecca Sandefur’s call for a broad empirical focus when studying access to civil justice: we conducted a comparative study investigating dif­ fer­ent social groups, concentrated on uses of the law in a broad array of institutions for the resolution of differences over inheritance and conjugal separation, and rooted our examination of the law in the broader sociology of in­equality.44 ­Legal counsel is offered mainly by two professions in France, and both may be involved in ­family economic affairs, depending on the complexity of a situation and the assets involved. ­Lawyers represent their clients in court or by privately ordering their affairs. Notaires are specialized in contracts and fiscal law and are legally mandated to evaluate and distribute f­amily assets (they draw up and ­settle ­wills, manage the transfer of deeds in property transactions, draft prenuptial agreements, oversee the liquidation of marital property, and much more). Unlike ­lawyers, they do not represent one client but act for both parties, more like mediators. Though the studies leading to the f­ amily case studies w ­ ere conducted individually, we did our research on notaires together. Our materials on ­family courts and ­lawyers ­were collected u ­ nder the auspices of a larger collective study begun in 45 2008. ­Here, too, we changed all names and avoided giving precise locations while providing enough information for readers to understand the situation and follow our analy­sis. In some cases, details of specific events had to be slightly modified to avoid pos­si­ble identification of the ­legal professionals, their clients, and other litigants involved.

The Gender of Capital Certain social classes monopolize wealth and strive to preserve it when passing it on to the next generation, while other social classes are per­sis­ tently deprived of wealth. All the while, w ­ omen accumulate less wealth

Introduction  13

than men. Class in­equality and gender in­equality are intertwined, and studies in some countries, particularly in the United States, are able to document a racial dimension to wealth in­equality. Age and generation are also ­factors, as we ­shall soon see. We take an intersectional approach to understanding ­these inequalities by connecting them to multiple kinds of social domination. Our study of ­family wealth arrangements explores the physical and symbolic places where ­these inseparable dynamics of in­equality play out. Examining where and when ­family wealth is accumulated and distributed demands breaking with the common notion of the ­family as a haven of affectionate peace amid a heartless, cap­i­tal­ist world.46 The f­ amily must be considered as an economic institution like any other, a place where wealth is produced, circulated, controlled, and assigned value. We develop this argument in Chapter 1, situating it in scholarship on the f­amily and in­equality. In Chapter 2, we use ­family case studies and statistical data to describe how ­these mechanisms of wealth production, circulation, control, and evaluation are integrated into ­family strategies of social reproduction that aim to maintain and strengthen the status of the ­family group. We demonstrate that ­these strategies are detrimental to ­women’s accumulation of wealth. Next, we enter the offices of l­egal professionals, where ­family economic arrangements are discreetly formalized in l­egal language and made official. ­Family members may meet vari­ous ­legal professionals who ­will help them to “domesticate” ­family and property law, to an extent that depends on their social class. The work of notaires and ­lawyers exacerbates economic in­equality between social classes by aiding and abetting the maintenance and transfer of wealth within the most affluent families while si­mul­ta­ neously serving to conceal, endorse, and legitimate the gender wealth gap (Chapter 3). The partition of estates and the liquidation of conjugal assets are moments of formalized accounting. This accounting may look neutral and technical, but it incorporates gender norms that ultimately ­favor men, especially ­those from higher economic classes. This sexist accounting does not necessarily come from a conscious or explicit ­will of ­legal professionals to dispossess w ­ omen of their property, but it does contribute to further entrenching gender in­equality in practice (Chapter 4). ­Family financial decisions that contribute to economic in­equality are seldom contested, in the name of keeping the f­amily peace and stability, and they are costly for ­women to overturn. Wealth arrangements during separations and estate

14   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

settlements may furthermore run up against tax arrangements. Tax avoidance is a common ­family unifier, but often to the detriment of less fortunate f­ amily members, who are usually ­women (Chapter 5). In Chapter 6 we demonstrate that the ­legal system fails to ­counter ­these sexist mechanisms when married or unmarried c­ ouples separate. This is partly ­because the ­legal tools for balancing the economic consequences of separation are inegalitarian in practice, and partly ­because judges (including female judges) apply t­ hese rules according to a mostly subconscious, sexist conception of men’s and w ­ omen’s respective contributions to their f­ amily’s wealth. In families with no assets to split, only expenses to share, ­women not only have to take charge of the daily lives of their c­ hildren but are also responsible for all the paperwork necessary to obtain public support. From the perspective of ­family courts and the state bureaucracy, it seems quite normal that ­women should have to beg for economic help from welfare or their former partner (Chapter 7). ­Women are expected to care for c­ hildren, feed them, help them with their homework, and plan extracurricular activities. Expected to do the ­house­work, maintain and decorate the home, be prepared to serve drinks or coffee at a moment’s notice, plan ­family dinners and meals with friends. Expected to fill in at the cash register in the shop, be a joint guarantor for a business loan thanks to their secure status as a civil servant, or­ga­nize dinners for the clients of a husband whose work obliged her to follow him to another country . . . ​a ll of ­t hese practices are common to ­women in the bourgeoisie through the working classes, and all contribute to the f­ amily’s wealth, if only ­because they ­free men from obligations that would hold back their ­careers. ­These activities require significant amounts of time as well as a variety of resources, especially cultural ones. When the time comes for the division of an estate or conjugal property, w ­ omen’s contributions to the ­family’s wealth (usually in the form of unpaid ­labor) are invisible, denied, or at best discussed to ­little effect. Pierre Bourdieu’s definition of capital—­a set of accumulated material and symbolic resources from which one can secure social profit—­has informed the overarching finding laid out in this book.47 To wit: despite the active contribution of ­women’s work to the production, accumulation, and transfer of ­family wealth, capital is still dominated by men in the twenty-­first ­century.

1 The ­Family as an Economic Institution

O

n september 26, 2016, a man and a w ­ oman faced off live from Hofstra University on Long Island, watched by 84 million tele­vi­sion viewers.1 Hillary Rodham Clinton, 69 years old, was dressed in red. Donald J. Trump, 70 years old, wore a dark suit and a blue tie. It was the first of three televised debates between the Demo­cratic and Republican candidates for president of the United States. Five minutes in, Clinton sounded the charge: You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life and that’s all to his benefit. He started his business with fourteen million dollars borrowed from his ­father and he ­really believes that the more you help wealthy ­people, the better off we ­will be and that every­thing ­will work out from ­there. I ­don’t buy that. I have a dif­fer­ent experience. My ­father was a small businessman. He worked ­really hard, he printed drapery fabrics on long ­tables where he pulled out ­those fabrics and he went down with the silkscreen and dumped the paint in and took the squeegee and kept g­ oing. And so what I believe is, the more we can do for the m ­ iddle class, the more we can invest in you, your education, your skills, your f­uture, the better off we ­will be, the better we ­will grow.2

This was obviously heavi­ly staged rhe­toric, right up to the detailed gestures of silk-­screening that she reenacted on an imaginary worktable. Hilary 15

16   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

Clinton depicted her opponent as the lucky heir of a wealthy ­family, and herself as having learned to rely on nothing but her own hard work following her ­father’s example. Donald Trump fought back, minimizing the role of his f­ather’s money and maximizing his own merit in building a power­ful empire: “Well, for one t­ hing and before we start on that, my f­ ather gave me a very small loan in 1975 and I built it into a com­pany that’s worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assets in the world, and I say that only b­ ecause that’s the kind of thinking that our country needs.”3 Donald Trump presented himself as a businessman and self-­made man to avoid acknowledging the crucial seed money he received from his ­father, Fred Trump, a New York City real estate developer. During his presidential campaign, Trump stated that he had only received a “very small loan” of $1 million from his f­ather in 1975, which he had since paid back. In truth, the financial support was much greater. Three days before the debate, the Wall Street Journal reported evidence that Fred Trump had provided many forms of financial help to his son during the first de­cade of his ­c areer—­including loans, collateral, and buybacks when Donald Trump brushed with failure—­amounting to a sum total of $14 million, the figure cited by Hillary Clinton.4 In 2018, two years of Pulitzer Prize–­winning investigation by reporters at the New York Times led to revelations that Donald Trump had in fact received at least $413 million from his ­father, a lifetime of cash and property advances that started in Donald’s infancy and continued up to his parents’ deaths in 1999 and 2000.5 Th ­ ese transfers occurred through a series of l­egal and illegal arrangements—­such as the underestimation of property value and falsified maintenance invoices—­that allowed the Trump ­family to pay only 5 ­percent in taxes on the inheritance, instead of the 55 ­percent provided by law at the time. While Donald Trump chose brazen lies, Hillary Clinton offered a selective version of her life story, with some notable omissions. By focusing on the love of work that she owed to her f­ather, she avoided mentioning that her own fortune was also a ­family ­matter. With her husband, former president Bill Clinton, Hillary had by 2015 collected over $3 billion from donors met during forty-­plus years in politics. A large part of this money went directly to the Clinton Foundation, a charity.6 Despite their po­liti­cal differences, ­there was one striking similarity in how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump presented themselves to Amer-



The Family as an Economic Institution  17

ican voters. One was a millionaire, the other a billionaire, and both largely owed their fortunes to their families, but both candidates chose to vaunt their individual merits and efforts. Clinton exalted hard work as a legitimate means of social advancement, while Trump heralded the risk-­taking entrepreneur as a model for society. In so ­doing, they left a fundamental aspect of their life stories in the shadows—­the accumulation and transfer of wealth in the f­ amily, between ­father and son, and between husband and wife—as if it would be po­liti­cal suicide for Trump and Clinton to publicly admit the role of their families’ economic backing in their c­ areers. This chapter shows how mundane such transfers of f­amily assets actually are, by demonstrating that the f­ amily is an economic institution: a locus for the production, circulation, control, and valuation of wealth.

Is the Age of F ­ amily Inheritance ­Really Over? The propensity to conceal the scale of economic transfers among ­family members is not specific to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, nor to the United States. For nearly two centuries, and throughout the world, conservatives and progressives alike have been spreading a g­ rand narrative that the ­family and the economy are growing apart in cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties, transforming the ­family in the pro­cess. This ­grand narrative falls somewhere between scientific description and po­liti­cal my­thol­ogy, and it goes something like this: In industrial and postindustrial wage-­earning socie­ties, the ­family is no longer rooted in the economic interdependence of ­family members or focused on the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next. What the f­ amily might have lost in economic power, it supposedly gained in a newfound quality of personal relationships between kin, in par­tic­u­lar between spouses and between parents and ­children in the typical nuclear ­family. The f­ amily has become more about bonds and feelings, and less about money and property. In France, the ­grand narrative of the modern Western ­family emerged at the dawn of the nineteenth ­century from the stormy debates between members of parliament and intellectuals that followed the establishment of egalitarian inheritance.7 The Civil Code, introduced by Napoleon in 1804, proclaimed that inheritance would henceforth be divided equally among all direct descendants regardless of their sex or birth order. At the same time, freedom of testation was established in the newly in­de­pen­dent

18   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

United States, granting the right to leave one’s property to the ­people of one’s choosing. In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville became an impassioned advocate for both forms of succession, which did away with primogeniture, the historical advantage given to the eldest son. According to Tocqueville, both systems liberated the ­family from material constraints, so “filial love” and “fraternal tenderness” could henceforth flourish.8 Fifty years l­ater, the founder of French sociology, Émile Durkheim, took an even more radical position, predicting the end of inheritance. “A day ­will come when a man ­will no longer be permitted, even through a w ­ ill, to leave his fortune to his descendants; just as, since the French Revolution, he is not allowed to leave them his offices and honors,” Durkheim stated in his 1892 course on “The Conjugal ­Family.”9 He aspired to a more demo­ cratic and fair society, based solely on merit rather than accidents of birth. His prediction also extended Tocqueville’s analy­sis of changes in ­family relations: “Material goods cease, to an even greater extent, to act as a cement for domestic society. Domestic solidarity is becoming entirely a ­matter of persons.”10 To predict the end of inheritance in late nineteenth-­century France was quite audacious. With hindsight, and thanks to the history of economics as written by authors such as Thomas Piketty, we now know that inheritance was at its peak importance in the national economy during the Belle Époque. Wealth inequality was then particularly severe: Before World War I, a tiny elite of 1 ­percent of the French population controlled 45 to 60 ­percent of national wealth, and the wealthiest 10 ­percent controlled nearly 90 ­percent of it.11 But Durkheim’s hypothesis that the f­amily was focusing less on material t­ hings does reasonably describe the second half of the twentieth ­century: The development of the wage-­earning economy, two world wars, the depression of the 1930s, post–­World War II inflation, and the implementation of re­distribution policies all reduced ­family wealth and challenged the nineteenth-­century societal model r­ unning on inheritance and private income. In 1960, historian Philippe Ariès described the emergence at the beginning of the modern era of a new conception of childhood among affluent families in Eu­rope.12 Other historians followed in his wake, documenting the rise of affection and feelings in the ­family. They studied the new aspiration to f­ amily intimacy that manifested itself in the homes of eighteenth-­



The Family as an Economic Institution  19

century bourgeois families, where ­there was a growing sense of “individual affection” that gradually trickled down to the working classes.13 “Emotional unity” emerged with the Industrial Revolution, making marriage, love, and sexuality converge while pushing into the background the economic interests under­lying marital and ­family relations.14 In parallel, economic historians described a decline in f­amily businesses passed down through the generations, in f­avor of larger firms directed by non-­owning man­ag­ers, a model purportedly better suited to the transformations that resulted from the Industrial Revolution.15 This body of work suggested that t­ hese forces jointly helped to liberate the “modern f­amily” from inherited wealth and economic de­pen­dency.

Replacing an Economic Legacy with a Cultural One? Paradoxically, Pierre Bourdieu’s analy­sis of social reproduction also played a role in deflecting social science’s attention away from f­amily economic transfers. Bourdieu’s first studies of farmers in Kabylia (Algeria) and Béarn (his home region in France) ­were of socie­ties or­ga­nized around the transfer of economic capital, especially land, down the f­amily line.16 At the time of Bourdieu’s earliest research in the 1960s, however, Algerian farm communities had already been sidelined by colonial capitalism, and farmers in the Béarn ­were undergoing two crises. One was technical and economic, as smaller, unprofitable farms ­were disappearing, while the other was social and cultural, as eldest sons, once the favored ­children who would inherit land, ­were becoming “unmarriageable,” a fate unthinkable only a generation ­earlier. By the mid-1960s and 1970s, Pierre Bourdieu and his team w ­ ere analyzing the ascendant role of schooling in individuals’ social trajectories. In the classic 1964 study The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture, Bourdieu and his colleague Jean-­Claude Passeron used the notion of inheritance (héritage, which can also be translated as “legacy”) to describe the social inequalities in access to higher education. Bourdieu and Passeron argued that the stratified higher education system reproduced and legitimated the class structure by converting social distinctions acquired from ­family background into educational distinctions, justified by individual

20   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

merit.17 Th ­ ere emerged a new lexicon—­“ inheritance,” “rate of return on educational capital,” “possession,” “privilege,” “transfer,” “squandering,” “dispossession,” and eventually “cultural capital” (in the 1970 book ­later translated as Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture)—­for expressing this new perspective on the educational system, depicted as a fundamental institution for the intergenerational reproduction of class in­equality.18 Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski, and Monique de Saint-­Martin concluded that the “educational boom” that started in the 1960s was a result of a large-­scale conversion of economic capital into cultural capital (mea­ sured largely by the level and type of educational attainments) by the ­middle and upper classes, from small farmers to man­ag­ers and captains of industry: “No longer able to transmit their economic wealth directly, members of the economic elite are forced increasingly to convert a portion of their economic capital into cultural capital by sending their c­ hildren to the proper universities and business schools. Th ­ ese inheritors, in turn, reconvert their cultural and social capital into economic dominance.”19 In turn, ­those whose assets ­were primarily in the form of cultural capital had to further invest in education just to hold on to their position. This body of research suggested that cultural capital was superseding economic capital as the main tool in f­ amily strategies for social reproduction. In the 1980s, the sociology of the ­family started incorporating Bourdieusian theory into the ­grand narrative of the modern f­ amily. In France, François de Singly suggested that the transfer of cultural capital was coherent with the notion of the new emotional and eco­nom­ically disinterested relationships being experienced in the f­ amily that had been pop­u­lar­ ized by other sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck: “With the primacy of academic capital, the relationship between parents and ­children became ‘purified,’ in a way: such relations w ­ ere no longer directly 20 for the transfer of wealth.” This body of work reduced wealth transfers to their symbolic dimension; they served mainly to pass on the memory of forebears rather than social status. The objects given and received w ­ ere proof that freely chosen emotional attachment was pos­si­ble, even in the ­family.21 This approach was more interested in how individuals decide which parts of their ­family history they hang on to and which parts they reject than it was in the material possessions that allow one generation to influence the fate of their descendants.



The Family as an Economic Institution  21

Rediscovering Economic Transfers in the ­Family We had issues with this ­grand narrative of the modern f­amily ever since our first field studies in the early 2000s. We ­were studying families of self-­ employed farmers, tradespeople, and shop­keep­ers, as well as families of wage-­earners who owned or rented their homes, and whichever the situation, economic transfers between ­family members always proved crucial to individuals’ social advancement. Such transfers affected ­people’s place of residence, standard of living, ability to buy a home, and professional ­future. The economic stakes sometimes created tensions between parents and ­children, ­sisters and ­brothers, husbands and wives, mothers-­in-­law and stepdaughters, and beyond. ­Were we studying unusual families, archaic small-­town exceptions on the sidelines of the road to modernity? In fact, no. In the early 2000s, broad swaths of the working classes ­were weakened by the economic crisis. The French welfare state strug­gled to ­handle the resulting poverty, and each successive administration seemed to rediscover “­family solidarity” as a magic—­and cheap—­solution for all its prob­lems.22 At the end of the day, wealth and f­ amily economic support largely determined access to higher education, employment, and housing across the social spectrum. This truth endures. For ­those fortunate enough to have some, ­family wealth can provide the buffer between student years and stable employment; for every­one ­else it is cruelly lacking. Though France has social assistance for unemployed or underemployed individuals, it is reserved for ­those over age 25. Throughout Eu­rope, the model of ­free public education is unraveling u ­ nder neoliberal austerity policies in public spending. The cost of a college education has become much higher than it used to be, making further demands on f­ amily finances. ­Family wealth can give c­ hildren the right address to get into a “good” high school and avoid a mediocre one, and can provide tutoring, opportunities to study abroad, and access to summer school.23 Families at the lower end of the social scale find it increasingly difficult to obtain and keep public housing or financially support their ­children’s higher education, so working-­class students have to work while in school, which weighs on their academic outcomes. Likewise, in the United States, higher education is a debt before it can be proven an asset.24 Studies show that the strong association between parental wealth and c­ hildren’s educational attainment has increased over time.25

22   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

As the wage-­earning society fades ­under assault from the gig economy, the existence of ­family economic support—­through inheritance, gifts, trusts, one-­time or regular financial help, providing collateral for a loan application, and so on—is ever more essential to starting a business, having easy access to credit, or acquiring profitable assets.26 “My apartment is financing my start-up,” boasts an Airbnb advertisement picturing a man standing in front of a commercial oven. In France, business ­owners, members of the professions, and other self-­employed ­people are still a minority, making up only 12 ­percent of the workforce, but self-­employment is no longer ­limited to agriculture, the trades, the professions, and commerce; it has become increasingly frequent in the ser­vice sector as well.27 While the twentieth-­century development of the wage-­earning society greatly reduced the importance of business legacies, the tide has recently turned on this historical trend, in France as in other postindustrial economies.28 Unemployment, the rising insecurity of wage work, and discrimination against minorities on the ­labor market have pushed some members of the working classes to enter the gig economy, even though it pays poorly and provides l­ imited social coverage.29 Self-­employment also opened a path for ­women with degrees to rejoin the ­labor market ­a fter taking time off for child-­rearing.30 In recent de­c ades, public policy in OECD countries has encouraged home owner­ship over public housing, renting, and other investments through tax incentives for owner-­occupied housing.31 As a result, aggregate homeownership rates (mea­ sur­ ing the proportion of owner-­ occupied housing) have increased significantly in many OECD countries, even though ­there are still impor­tant national discrepancies in home owner­ship rates, homeowner equity, and access to mortgage and credit. In Eu­rope, the home owner­ship rate varied between 42 ­percent in Switzerland and 96 ­percent in Romania in 2020; between t­ hose bookends, the rate was 51 ­percent in Germany, 65 ­percent in the United Kingdom, 72 ­percent in Italy, and 76 ­percent in Spain (in comparison, it has held steady at around 65 ­percent in the United States since the 1960s). In France the proportion of h ­ ouse­holds owning their primary residence increased from less than 40 ­percent in the 1950s to 64 ­percent in 2020. Access to home owner­ship extends well into the working classes, who take on significant debt.32 ­Because of the reduction of social security pensions (and the threat of further cuts), p ­ eople want to make sure they w ­ ill have a



The Family as an Economic Institution  23

roof over their heads in their old age.33 Nonetheless, owning one’s primary residence is still a mark of social distinction, especially when it comes with a well-­reputed address. Parental and grand-­parental wealth has a discernable effect on the living and housing standards of ­those fortunate enough to benefit from it.34 Home owner­ship also manifests strong intergenerational inequalities: older c­ouples are more likely to have paid off their loans, whereas younger h ­ ouse­holds renting in the private sector must devote a growing proportion of their bud­gets to housing.35 A new generation of economists, led by Thomas Piketty, has emphasized wealth and inheritance in explaining the production of in­equality in con­ temporary capitalism.36 In­equality of wealth, which was thought to be in decline ­because of the generalization of wage-­earning employment, has in fact been on the rise worldwide for the past three de­cades. In 2021, the poorest half of the global population barely owned any wealth at all, possessing just 2 ­percent of the total, while the richest 10 ­percent of the global population owned 76 ­percent of all wealth.37 Wealth in­equality varies significantly between dif­fer­ent regions of the world. The top 10 ­percent owned 70 ­percent of overall wealth in North Amer­i­ca and almost 80 ­percent in Latin Amer­i­c a and in the M ­ iddle East and North Africa.38 Wealth in­equality was the lowest in Eu­rope, relative to elsewhere: the richest 10 ­percent owned 58 ­percent of total ­house­hold wealth, while the ­middle 40 ­percent owned 38 ­percent and the bottom 50 ­percent owned 4 ­percent. Even in Scandinavian countries, which are known for their policy initiatives to reduce income in­equality and promote social mobility, the distribution of wealth is highly unequal, and generally higher than in many other Eu­ro­pean countries.39 In France, the richest 10 ­percent of individuals possessed around 60 ­percent of the national wealth, while the poorest half of the population possessed less than 5 ­percent.40 ­There are two ways of accumulating wealth: by putting money aside, or through inheritance. Facundo Alvaredo, Bertrand Garbinti, and Thomas Piketty show that inheritance represented 70 to 80 ­percent of the private wealth held by individuals in Eu­rope ­until 1910, but t­ hese levels then plummeted with the two world wars, only to rise again ­later: inheritance represented 30–40 ­percent of the private wealth held by Eu­ro­pe­ans in the 1950s– 1980s, but it is currently over 60  ­percent.41 The US pattern, albeit less marked, follows the same U-­shaped curve over the 1900–2010 period.42 We are certainly a long way from the 1910s, but if current economic and

24   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

demographic trends continue, the inherited portion of wealth w ­ ill only increase over the twenty-­first ­century. ­Under the harsh light of statistics, Eu­ro­pean and North American socie­ ties appear to be dominated by a handful of “ultra-­rich” families and a greater number of rentiers. The latter have paid jobs, but their wealth comes increasingly from gifts and inheritance. It is more and more difficult for individuals without inheritance to become members of the wealthier classes solely off their earnings from work, a well-­documented observation in France that also applies to varying degrees to other countries.43 In the United States, more than half of ­people with parents in the highest wealth quintile end up in that quintile themselves.44 From the moment the return on capital is higher than the return on work (as Piketty demonstrates), the groundwork is laid for the resurgence of massive wealth in­equality based on inheritance, rather than a more uniform distribution based on income accumulated over a lifetime of work. Inheritance has not only persisted as a practice, but it has also retaken a central position in how con­temporary cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties operate. The resurgence of inheritance is tantamount to a return of the ­family as a key actor in the economy, contributing to socioeconomic in­equality and reinforcing the bound­a ries between families of dif­fer­ent class and racial backgrounds. The stakes are high. For example, the racial wealth gap in the United States, whose roots go back to slavery and segregation, has been well documented since the 1980s.45 It was further exacerbated during the G ­ reat Recession of 2007–2009, with the subprime lending crisis and the bursting of the housing ­bubble. In 2016, the median wealth of white ­house­holds was $171,000, compared to $17,100 for black h ­ ouse­holds and $20,600 for His46 panic ­house­holds. One main ­factor that explains this enormous in­equality of wealth is inheritance and gifts from the previous generation.47 African American h ­ ouse­holds are less likely to own their homes than white ­house­holds. When African Americans do become homeowners, it is much ­later in life b­ ecause their parents are less able to provide financial help ­as it is more difficult for them to get a mortgage b­ ecause they must pay higher interest rates. Furthermore, residential segregation leads to a system where homes owned by white ­house­holds appreciate faster than black-­owned properties do. In many neighborhoods, a rising proportion of African Americans



The Family as an Economic Institution  25

lowers home value, affecting property tax revenues and consequently the funding available for public schools and local ser­vices. Thus, even though all property accumulates wealth (whether black- or white-owned), home ownership also significantly widens the racial wealth gap.48 Furthermore, recent studies crossing race, gender, and marital status have revealed how the American tax system penalizes black h ­ ouse­holds. This stems from the fact that most married ­couples file their taxes together in a joint tax return, which is most beneficial to ­house­holds where one spouse contributes much more than the other to the h ­ ouse­hold income—­a pattern more typical of white ­house­holds. ­Because black ­women are more likely to earn about as much as (or more than) their husbands, black h ­ ouse­holds d ­ on’t benefit from this 49 marriage bonus as much as white h ­ ouse­holds do. Pinning down racial wealth in­equality is more challenging in France, for lack of the necessary statistical categories.50 The French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) produced one study that is an exception: the 2008 “Trajectories and Origins” survey focuses not only on nationality and birthplace of respondents, which is standard in French surveys, but also on parental birthplace, languages spoken, and perceptions of discrimination.51 Sociologist Margot Delon used this data to show that 27  ­percent of Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian immigrants and their ­children in France ­were homeowners, while 51 ­percent of Portuguese immigrants and their ­children and 60 ­percent of the general population owned their own homes.52 The study also probed real estate owner­ship in the country of origin: 19 ­percent of ­those with Portuguese backgrounds owned a home outside of France, as compared to only 10 ­percent of ­those with Algerian backgrounds. Real estate assets help Franco-­Portuguese families exploit their whiteness to set themselves apart from colonial and postcolonial minorities. Home owner­ship, w ­ hether in France or the country of origin, is central to the upward mobility strategies of some immigrants, but not all of them can afford it. This difference in access both illustrates and effectively widens the racial divide. Ethnographic studies also describe tensions in suburbs where some working-­class families manage to purchase property while the majority live in social housing. Some white families root their aspirations of upward mobility in homeownership and perceive the presence of black or brown families in their neighborhood as a threat to ­those aspirations.53

26   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

How the F ­ amily Contributes to Class In­equality Inheritance is a ­family ­matter. This truth is self-­evident in France, where the Civil Code and tax law ­favor wealth transfers to direct descendants. ­Children cannot be disinherited, and their inheritance is taxed at a much lower rate than transfers outside of the ­family. That being the case, it’s no surprise that wealth is usually transferred within the ­family. In France, 80 ­percent of all inter vivos gifts come from parents (representing 93 ­percent of the total value of all gifts received), and 9 ­percent from grandparents. The same goes for inheritance, provided that one excludes inter-­spouse inheritance (widowed spouses do not always report such assets as inheritance in surveys, making data unreliable). Between generations, 83 ­percent of inheritances come from parents (90 ­percent in value), and 8 ­percent from grandparents.54 Tax-­exempt charitable giving accounts for only 0.4 ­percent of bequests in France, where philanthropy is not very developed (due in part to a historically strong welfare state).55 Other types of transfer are pos­si­ble, but they are infrequent b­ ecause of high taxation rates. For example, a donation to a business would be taxed at a rate of 60 ­percent, like any transfer to an individual outside of the ­family. Inheritance is also a f­ amily ­matter in places without such binding legislation. The United States allows the freedom of testation, and its estate and gift tax rates are the same regardless of the relationship between the donor and the recipient, but intergenerational f­ amily inheritance still occurs in the same proportions as in France.56 While philanthropy is more developed in the United States than in Eu­rope, the social norm of transferring wealth to offspring is also strong, so ­children typically expect to inherit something from their parents, and the act of disinheriting is viewed as one of the strongest ways to exclude someone from f­ amily membership.57 Instead of buffering in­equality, intergenerational economic transfers widen and entrench social class divisions. One analy­sis of the French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine), 2014–2015, found that one-­third of individuals in France had received e­ither inter vivos gifts or inheritance that year.58 Economists analyzed parental asset data to identify another third as probable “­future heirs” who w ­ ere likely to receive significant economic capital in the f­ uture, and to determine that the remaining third w ­ ere un59 likely to inherit anything, given their parents’ ­limited assets. This difference is called “primary in­equality,” meaning the in­equality between ­people



The Family as an Economic Institution  27

whose (­grand)parents accumulated sufficient wealth to bequeath and p ­ eople 60 whose parents do not own any property. The probability of inheritance only reinforces economic in­equality between occupational groups, taken as a signifier of social class: 95 ­percent of h ­ ouse­holds in which the person of reference is in one of the professions have already received inter vivos gifts or inheritance or are likely to receive some in the f­ uture, in contrast to only 40 ­percent of h ­ ouse­holds in which the person of reference is a 61 laborer. On top of primary in­equality, the value of the bequeathed wealth—­ which economists term “secondary in­equality”—­must also be taken into account. In one analy­sis of the French Wealth Survey, 2014–2015, economist Nicolas Frémeaux found that the value of f­amily assets received by heirs varied widely: the 10 ­percent of heirs receiving the largest gifts and inheritance received about half of the total value of all inherited wealth in France. At the lower end of the social spectrum, the 50 ­percent of the population that received the lowest inheritances received only 7 ­percent of the total value of all inherited wealth in France.62 Economist André Masson’s analy­sis of the French Wealth Survey, 2003–2004, revealed a 12:1 ratio in wealth transfers between business-­owning men receiving assets from business-­owning parents and laborers receiving assets from laboring parents.63 Given that blue-­collar men are also three times less likely than men who own a business to receive any inheritance at all, it is easy to establish that parents in business-­owning families pass on an average of thirty times more wealth than do parents in blue-­collar families.64 A third in­equality is temporal, separating ­house­holds that have already received assets from t­ hose that ­haven’t but are likely to. H ­ ere again, situations differ according to social class. Members of the working class receive smaller inheritances or none at all, but they inherit e­ arlier due to the shorter life span of their parents (men working in management-­level jobs live an average six years longer than men who are laborers, and t­ here is a similar gap of three years for w ­ omen).65 Inversely, the richest h ­ ouse­holds are the principal recipients of inter vivos gifts, which are received ­earlier than inheritance. Less than 10 ­percent of all h ­ ouse­holds receive such gifts, but they represent more than half of the value of all asset transfers.66 The upper classes also offer the most financial assistance to ­family members, prefiguring f­ uture gifts and inheritance, in the form of making an interest-­free loan, providing collateral, helping with housing costs, and the like.67

28   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

In sum, in the upper classes, a variety of wealth transfers add up over the course of one’s life, favoring individual autonomy and opening new opportunities. In the working classes, the main form of intergenerational aid is living together ­under the same roof rather than passing along assets. This helps ­family members to better cope with unexpected challenges (unemployment, separation, de­pen­dency) and make economies of scale. The homes or land they inherit are often of modest value, and although they do provide the next generation with housing, taking advantage of it often means staying in an eco­nom­ically depressed region. Fi­nally, among the wage-­earning ­middle classes, investment in ­children’s educations chips away at parents’ assets and undermines their ability to help their c­ hildren acquire property before inheritance.68

House­hold Surveys, or How to Hide the Gender Wealth Gap ­behind a Fig Leaf ­ ere are two main ways to gather statistical data on wealth in­equality acTh cording to social class: conducting self-­reported surveys on ­house­hold net worth or assembling tax data. Self-­reported h ­ ouse­hold asset surveys ask about all the assets possessed by all members of the ­house­hold and are widely practiced worldwide. With the exception of the German Socioeconomic Panel, which interviews several members of the ­house­hold, ­these surveys question only the member of the ­house­hold who is thought to have the best overall view of all h ­ ouse­hold members’ assets. Social class is determined at the ­house­hold level, based ­either on the ­house­hold’s total revenue or assets (as economists tend to do) or by attributing a socioprofessional category to the entire h ­ ouse­hold based on the job held by a “person of reference,” typically the man in a different-­sex ­couple (as is most often done by sociologists). The trou­ble is that this data conceals the socioeconomic inequalities that may exist within the basic observational unit, the ­house­hold. Tax data pre­sents the same kind of prob­lem: the tax administration collects data on the assets of the members of what it defines as a “fiscal ­house­hold,” often without specifying what belongs to whom. In both cases, assets owned jointly by a man and a w ­ oman in a c­ ouple are usually put into a single inventory, making it impossible to mea­sure wealth in­ equality between them. In addition to the difficulties with ­t hese administrative and statistical resources, ­t here are also challenges related to how wealth is owned. How



The Family as an Economic Institution  29

can one mea­sure the wealth that an individual owns personally when some of their assets are co-­owned with other ­people? While a paycheck always goes to an individual, a ­great number of primary residences are legally owned by ­couples. Other kinds of assets are commonly co-­owned by multiple relatives, such as a ­family business owned by a ­father and son, or siblings who keep joint owner­ship of their parents’ h ­ ouse as a vacation home. ­Legal and statistical categories rooted in a family-­based conception of wealth make it even more difficult to mea­sure men’s and w ­ omen’s wealth and the inequalities between them. As sociologist Rémi Lenoir writes, the ­family is “the most familiar of objects” b­ ecause it is presented with all “the self-­evidence of what is inscribed and institutionalized, notably in language, associated cognitive and perceptual schemes, and laws and modes of social organ­ization to which it is linked. . . . ​[The f­ amily] is institutionalized by social structures, the division of l­abor, law, economic structures, systems of social welfare and social ser­vices, and, more generally, the state.” 69 The state implicitly and explic­itly considers the ­family as a unit of analy­sis in many of its categories, including “house­hold” (used by public statistics), “tax f­ amily” (used by the tax administration), and “community property” (used in the Civil Code). In all cases, the category “­family” masks inequalities between its members. When economists want to harmonize data sets concerning wealth distribution between countries or time periods, they use data from the scale of the ­family unit to estimate individual net worth.70 When no other information is available, an assumption is made that p ­ eople living as a c­ ouple 71 each own half of the ­house­hold wealth. Remnants of patriarchal and familial ideology, the categories “house­hold” and “tax f­amily” prevent us from seeing the gender wealth gap—­like a fig leaf covering the disquieting fact that w ­ omen are poorer than men.72

Statistical Studies of the Gender of Capital: What We Know and What We ­Don’t The French Wealth Survey has been regularly updated since the mid-1980s (most recently in 2018). The survey focuses on a representative sample of approximately 10,000 French ­house­holds that are asked to describe each component of their assets in a detailed questionnaire. ­Because the survey is not interested in intra-­household in­equality, the only way one can get a

30   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

sense of the ­actual individual wealth owned respectively by w ­ omen and men is by conducting painstaking statistical analyses, such as correlating questions about the assets owned by each spouse to the asset-­sharing arrangement chosen at the time of marriage. This analy­sis produces some telling results. Men own much more capital than ­women do, w ­ hether it be financial, real estate, or business capital.73 In 2015, the average gender wealth gap was estimated at 24,000 euros, encompassing a wide variety of situations. The differences between working-­ class men and w ­ omen are more modest ­because they have fewer assets in the first place, but gender gaps are vast in the wealthiest classes. Far from fading away, this wealth in­equality has been growing in France over the past two de­cades. As we already mentioned, the gender wealth gap practically doubled between 1998 and 2015, rising from 9 ­percent to 16 ­percent of average overall wealth.74 ­These figures should be taken with a grain of salt. While descriptive studies of wealth are reasonably robust when dealing with asset owner­ship (knowing who owns the primary or secondary residence or a life insurance policy, for example), such information is more patchy when it comes to knowing how much that capital is worth. Most components of an individual’s wealth (houses, businesses, land, stocks, and so forth) are not being sold on the market at the time of the survey, so the questionnaire asks respondents to estimate their assets’ worth by checking one of a series of value ranges rather than giving a precise figure. This reduces the number of unanswered questions in the survey, but at the cost of imprecise answers. One also won­ders about the accuracy of respondents’ descriptions of what they actually possess. Unlike taxable income, which must be declared annually, p ­ eople have ­little occasion to inventory their overall net worth during their lifetimes (­there was one exception in France—­the wealth tax on private fortunes obliged the wealthiest families to make an annual declaration of their net worth, but it was rescinded by President Emmanuel Macron in 2018). Based on national accounts, the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) estimates that the mass of assets described in the French Wealth Survey is undervalued by around 40 ­percent.75 One furthermore won­ders to what extent respondents r­ eally know who owns what in their h ­ ouse­hold. For example, ­people married ­under a community property regime often think that they are the sole ­owners of their individual bank accounts, when in fact that money is



The Family as an Economic Institution  31

common property according to the law, as some only discover during a contested divorce. Only one person in a h ­ ouse­hold is asked to respond to the survey. Significantly, the wealthier the ­house­hold, the more likely it is that this respondent w ­ ill be a man, who ­will give his perception of who owns what.76 Only one h ­ ouse­hold wealth survey, conducted in Germany, questions both members of the ­couple about their assets, and it finds that men and w ­ omen give dif­fer­ent responses to the survey.77 We do not mean to suggest that all existing statistical data is worthless. To the contrary, we agree with Thomas Piketty that precise data is absolutely necessary for the rational discussion of wealth in­equality, and thus believe that improvements should be made to data collection and accessibility.78 We also believe that the statistical approach to wealth in­equality by gender and class is enhanced by using other, complementary methods that give researchers a better understanding of ­people’s ­family relations and their responses to questionnaires—­what they do and do not declare owning, which values they over-­and underestimate, and the consequences of their accounting in aggregate statistics.79

The Breakdown of a Domestic Relationship: When Gender In­equality Is Revealed For more than ten years, we ­were part of a large research team studying how the breakdown of marriages and cohabiting relationships is handled ­under the law. We and our colleagues observed hundreds of separation proceedings, read thousands of divorce files, and studied the cases of separating unmarried ­couples with ­children, giving us an opportunity to observe the extraordinary moment when the economic in­equality between partners is suddenly revealed.80 ­A fter the breakdown of a cohabitating relationship, ­women usually end up poorer than men. Statistical studies conducted in the United States in the 1980s and l­ater ones in Eu­rope follow the incomes of a group of ­house­holds year by year, and show that the standard of living for ­women generally deteriorates ­after relationship breakdown, while men’s remains stable or even improves.81 In France in the 1990s, divorce reduced the median income of ­women by a third, one of the most substantial drops in the Eu­ro­pean Union.82 This observation was confirmed by a study of all separations (of married and unmarried ­couples) from the early 2000s, which

32   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

revealed that ­women’s median income ­after separation fell by 31 ­percent while men’s fell only by 6 ­percent.83 A more recent study followed the evolution of the standard of living in a large sample of c­ ouples who divorced or ended civil ­unions in 2009.84 The study used tax declarations to determine the standard of living, then connected it to the number of ­house­hold members while together (in 2008) and a­ fter separation (in 2010). It found that a divorce or civil-­union breakdown caused an average decline in living standards of 19 ­percent for ­women but only 2.5 ­percent for men. Such studies do inform our understanding, but they only expose the short-­term effects of breakdown (a year ­after it occurs), and they only consider income. Our choice to study economic arrangements at the time of separation allowed us to discover deeper and less perceptible inequalities in wealth that have lasting effects on ­women’s lives. ­These disparities concern the distribution of savings and debt, home owner­ship, and retirement pensions. Court cases also led us to see that the impoverishment of ­women is more than a s­ imple result of conjugal separation. In fact, it starts much e­ arlier, during married or unmarried life together, largely as a result of the gendered division between professional work and domestic labor. The moment of separation reveals the economic inequalities that are woven into different-­sex domestic relationships. It also amplifies preexisting inequalities: even t­ oday, the cost of breakdown is mainly paid by ­women.

A Materialist Sociology of the Institution of the ­Family Our analy­sis picks up on a current of feminist theory that was born in the wake of the ­women’s liberation movement in the form of Marxist and materialist feminisms. Marxist feminists of the 1970s considered capitalism to be a system of production structurally dependent on the work of ­women. Workers are paid a wage in exchange for the exploitation of their l­abor, but the wives of workers are financially dependent on their husbands, even though they ensure the reproduction of the ­labor force by taking charge of domestic tasks. ­Unless they have wage-­earning jobs, they end up at the very bottom of the ladder of exploitation.85 In The Main ­Enemy (1980, originally published in French in 1970), economist and materialist feminist Christine Delphy analyzed kinship ties as relationships of economic production and



The Family as an Economic Institution  33

exploitation.86 A large portion of the wealth produced by families is not declared to state institutions like the tax administration or social ser­vices ­because families d ­ on’t register it or take it into account. As a result, economists ­don’t account for this wealth ­either, concentrating instead on monetized goods and ser­vices exchanged on the market. This extra-­mercantile production comes from invisible l­abor that is not recognized as work and is thus unpaid: domestic ­labor. Phi­los­o­pher and Marxist feminist Silvia Federici calls it “reproductive l­abor”—­encompassing not only child-­rearing but also all the other pro­cesses that create and maintain ­human life, such as looking ­after ­people, cooking, and educating. It is essential work that cap­i­tal­ist socie­ties fail to acknowledge, compensate, or support.87 Marxist and materialist feminists made two power­ful assertions. Domestic labor is indeed work, as any w ­ oman w ­ ill reply should anyone care 88 to ask her opinion on the topic. Such work is done for ­free, a fact that is the foundation of men’s exploitation of ­women’s work in the f­amily. “We want to call work what is work,” Federici wrote, “so that eventually we might rediscover what is love.”89 In the 1970s and 1980s, divorce started becoming common and l­egal procedures changed to accompany the trend: California created the possibility of no-­fault divorce in 1969, and “divorce by mutual consent” was introduced in France in 1975, in Australia in 1975, and in Canada in 1986. In the wake of this change, many feminists grew increasingly concerned with the socioeconomic f­uture of ­women ­a fter relationship breakdown.90 Feminists ­later shifted their focus to the equally legitimate issue of workplace equality, and feminist work on the f­amily became concentrated on promoting alternatives to heteronormative models of marriage and f­ amily.91 This turn occurred while the field of gender studies was becoming institutionalized in a sometimes-­hostile academic environment (especially so in France). It left the field to sociologists of the ­family—­most of whom ­were men—­who exalted heteronormative relations freed of economic stakes.92 British sociologist Anthony Giddens suggested that conjugal and marriage-­ like relationships ­were now made of “pure relations” based in the communication of emotions, and that such “pure relations” could only develop if both parties benefited psychologically and affectively from the relationship. For the French sociologist François de Singly, who wrote a book about ­women’s experiences of domestic relationship breakdown in France, the

34   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

normalization of separation signaled the emancipation of ­women.93 He concluded that w ­ omen could now become who they r­ eally ­were by putting an end to an unsatisfying relationship, but he barely mentioned the economic and material consequences of the end of such relationships. One reason for de Singly’s oversight was that he, like many sociologists of the ­family, primarily studied members of the upper class—­white, urban, college-­educated, and on a salary—­who ­were considered to be pioneers in establishing the new norms of modern identity. We agree more with British sociologist Beverley Skeggs, who asserts that the erasure of all material and economic aspects of ­family life in the breakdown of committed relationships only serves to conceal social relations based on class, gender, and sexuality, thereby lending undue credence to the myth of “pure,” emotional marriage-­like relationships and the worldview of straight, white, upper-­class men.94

­Family Economic Arrangements Revealed To c­ ounter this dominant perspective, we believe it is necessary to politicize something that is usually considered private, not to mention technical, ­legal, and tedious: ­family economic arrangements. The Marxist anthropologist Maurice Godelier defines the economy as “the social forms and structures of production, distribution, and circulation of goods that characterize a society at a given moment in its existence.”95 Such a substantive definition of the economy, focused on how a society satisfies its material needs, makes it clear that the f­ amily is a full-­fledged economic institution. The f­ amily is a locus for the production of wealth, but in order to see this clearly, one has to break with the dominant economic view that only takes market exchanges into account. Since the 1970s, Marxist feminists and anthropologists have described the domestic labor primarily performed by ­women as productive work in its own right, in addition to ­women’s contribution to the reproduction of the ­house­hold workforce. One contribution from this approach is demonstrating that capitalism perpetuates the domestic economy in order to appropriate the cheap ­labor of ­women.96 Since the 1980s, mainstream economics has no longer been able to ignore domestic production and has developed some fruitful tools for examining the ­family as an economic unit. Of par­tic­u­lar note, Gary Becker’s ­family



The Family as an Economic Institution  35

economics is rooted in an analogy: the ­family is a small business that produces goods and ser­vices (outputs) using resources that may be market goods or ­house­hold ­labor (inputs). This formulation makes it pos­si­ble to study the ­family with the standard tools of business economics.97 More recently, economic anthropology has developed research on the productive dimension of con­temporary families. French social scientist Florence Weber explains that this approach “works outside the borders of official economics and probes their everyday creation and redefinition.”98 In our previous work we have made frequent use of Weber’s concept of “house­holding” (faire maisonnée), which she defines as the assemblage of ele­ments that unite a family-­like group of individuals who regularly pool resources and engage in cooperative production for a common cause, such as caring for dependents (­children, disabled persons, elders), ­running a ­family business, or maintaining f­ amily assets (like the ­family home).99 Consequently, a ­house­holding group ­doesn’t necessarily coincide with a kinship group, a statistical ­house­hold, or what the tax administration considers a ­family. The f­ amily is also a place where wealth circulates. Economic sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes how commonplace are “intimate transactions”—­ that inextricable blend of personal and economic relations based on reciprocal trust: “Separated spouses provide or receive child support and help ­toward educational expenses; parents give their ­children allowances or help pay for their education; they help their c­ hildren face their first bank loan; and they leave them substantial bequests in their ­wills. Friends and parents send money disguised as wedding gifts, while money is freely lent among friends. Immigrants send money to their families back home, ­etc.”100 As ordinary as they are, intimate transactions make ­people feel uncomfortable, b­ ecause mixing f­amily relationships with money can lead to misunderstanding and conflict. In order to avoid this, relatives expend a considerable amount of social energy—­what Viviana Zelizer calls “relational work”—to clarify the rights, obligations, and meaning of their social practices.101 We draw on Zelizer’s perspective, placing the circulation of wealth between relatives and how they perceive it at the heart of our analy­sis. We turned to other research, often in gender studies, to see how ­family controls the uses of wealth. Pioneering research focused on the relationship between money and power in a c­ ouple. ­These studies showed that the partner with the highest income—­usually the man—­typically made the

36   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

major financial decisions, and that wage-­earning w ­ omen held more power relative to their partners than ­women who ­were homemakers.102 If one wants to understand a ­couple’s economic arrangements, merely listing who earns and owns what is insufficient: one also has to understand who controls, manages, allocates, and accesses money daily, who feels comfortable spending money on themselves, and who decides what should be put into savings.103 ­These studies identify clear connections between socioeconomic differences and gender norms. In the poorest ­couples, ­women manage the money. Being responsible for the ­family bud­get leads many w ­ omen to deprive themselves to avoid depriving their c­ hildren and to ensure that their husbands ­will have ready spending money.104 In the United States, sociologist Catherine Kenney reports that c­ hildren in low-­to moderate-­income two-­ parent h ­ ouse­holds are less likely to experience food insecurity when their parents’ pooled income is controlled by their m ­ other rather than their 105 ­father. A growing body of so­cio­log­i­cal and economic research has found that when w ­ omen control the money, they are more creditworthy than men, and their families are more likely to benefit from the income. In the global South, ­these ideas led to the creation of the microfinance sector, which developed mainly through the provision of small loans to poor ­women.106 Claims that microfinance promotes gender equality, empowers w ­ omen, and alleviates poverty ­were initially left unquestioned but have since become more controversial, paving the way for more sophisticated and empirical research on gendered h ­ ouse­hold spending dynamics, mainly in development studies.107 Other authors focus on the domestic l­abor entailed in keeping h ­ ouse­hold accounts and show that it is an effective means for middle-­class w ­ omen to 108 keep an eye on their partner’s spending. Among the wealthiest ­couples, however, studies show that ­women are rarely involved in the control and management of long-­term investments and holdings, and although they do contribute to everyday expenses, which may reach significant sums, they do not always know every­thing they and their husbands own.109 ­These studies not only highlight the extent to which resources are formally shared (joint bank accounts, for example) but also who controls ­t hose shared resources.110 They consequently nuance the g­ rand narrative of the modern ­family: while it is true that norms of equality are more



The Family as an Economic Institution  37

pre­sent ­today than they used to be, men’s money is not used to the same ends as w ­ omen’s. And while day-­to-­day management of money might more often fall to a ­woman, long-­term investments are almost always a man’s prerogative. Studying who controls the bud­get can only provide a partial picture of ­family wealth. ­Because such research is focused on daily income management, it is less interested in each spouse’s personal assets or in institutions such as banks, credit agencies, real estate brokers, and notaires that shape ­couples’ economic practices. The next chapters ­will concentrate on two major occasions when men and w ­ omen must formally assess what they own: when making economic arrangements a­ fter a parent’s death, and when discussing the economic implications of a divorce or separation. Obviously, estate planning can be spread out over de­cades (particularly with inter vivos gifts as anticipated ­future inheritance) and the final settlement of a divorce or separation can take several years, but both situations still include key moments of confrontation and clarification. Heirs and separating c­ ouples often have to seek the help of a notaire or ­lawyer, especially when asset values are high. We ­will thus shift our attention next to the l­egal professionals who make f­amily economic arrangements fit into a ­legal framework. ­Lawyers’ and notaires’ offices are sheltered spaces where wealth is assessed for distribution among ­family members and for taxation by the state in the form of inheritance or partitioning taxes. We ­will closely follow the accounting pro­cess that lists assets (what gets counted and what does not) in order to put a wide variety of property (stock, real estate, a business, and so on) into equivalency and set values for assets that are not being sold on the market. Despite appearances, ­these accounting operations are neither purely technical nor neutral. Economic inequalities according to class and gender are embedded in the nooks and crannies of such accounting. The f­ amily is a site for the production, circulation, control, and evaluation of wealth. Economic wealth is not the only form of capital that is accumulated and passed on in families, as Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated in developing the concept of cultural capital, but the renewed importance of f­amily assets and inheritance in con­temporary society defines ­family wealth arrangements as major cogs in the machine that maintains

38   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

and perpetuates in­equality.111 How do t­ oday’s families maintain, improve, and transfer their social status to ­future generations? How do families use ­family wealth arrangements in their strategies for upward mobility? In other words, how do f­amily wealth arrangements contribute to the perpetuation of firm bound­aries between social classes and the widening economic inequalities between men and w ­ omen?

2 ­ amily Reproduction versus F ­Women’s Wealth

J

ean-­p hilippe smet was better known by his stage name, Johnny Hallyday. The “French Elvis” was credited for bringing rock-­and-­roll to the French-­speaking world. In December 2017, he died of lung cancer at age 74, a­ fter a fifty-­seven-­year c­ areer.1 He had married five times and was the ­father of four ­children: the pop singer David Hallyday (whose ­mother was singer Sylvie Vartan), the actress Laura Smet (with actress Nathalie Baye), and Jade and Joy (13 and 9 at the time of his death), ­adopted with his last wife, Laeticia (42 when he died), with whom he had established official residency in the United States. On February 12, 2018, a press release from three ­lawyers became headline news in France: Laura Smet was astonished and pained to learn of her ­father Johnny Hallyday’s w ­ ill, ­u nder the terms of which all of his assets and royalties would be exclusively transferred to his wife Laeticia ­u nder California law. If this ­were to stand, her ­father would have left Laura nothing: no material gain, no rights to his artistic works, no memorabilia—no guitars, no motorcycles, not even the signed rec­ord sleeve for the song “Laura” that is dedicated to her. The ­w ill also provides that should his wife predecease him, the entirety of Jean-­Philippe Smet’s property and rights would

39

40   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

be exclusively transferred to his two ­daughters Jade and Joy, in equal shares. But ­these extravagant provisions manifestly breach the requirements of French law. Laura Smet has thus entrusted the ­lawyers Emmanuel Ravanas, Pierre-­Olivier Sur, and Hervé Temime with the task of defending her l­egal interests and taking any ­legal actions permitting the safeguarding of her ­father’s artistic legacy.2

In an open letter addressed to her dead ­father, Laura Smet added, “I would have preferred keeping ­these ­matters in the ­family, unfortunately, in our ­family, that’s how it is. . . . ​I am so proud to be your d ­ aughter. I love you, ­Daddy.” A few hours ­later, Laura’s half-­brother David Hallyday let it be known that he was joining Laura’s ­legal action. Johnny Hallyday’s ­widow Laeticia responded with a press release ­later that day, saying that she “had learned with disgust of the sudden media frenzy around her husband’s estate . . . ​[and] regretted that [Laura and David] had chosen publicity instead of keeping it to a ­family and ­legal setting.” The case of Johnny Hallyday’s estate burst into the media while we w ­ ere writing this book. More than 300 articles w ­ ere published in France in the week following ­these press releases.3 While this conflict was indeed exceptional, not least for the media coverage, it was also typical in that it raised issues commonly found in the estates of remarried ­couples and blended families. Where do c­ hildren from previous marriages stand in the division of the estate? What is the position of the current spouse relative to t­ hese stepchildren? The Hallyday affair is an excellent introduction to the intricacies of ­family and property law in France and the United States, and it also exposes the complex emotional, symbolic, material, and l­egal issues entangled in the settlement of an estate. In 1804, the French Civil Code established the equal division of inheritance between c­ hildren regardless of gender or birth order. In a country known for its wide-­ranging regional customary laws, all sons and d ­ aughters became heirs with legally reserved shares, meaning that they could no longer be disinherited and had to receive equal shares, in value and in kind, of their parents’ estates.4 Alexis de Tocqueville was but the first to herald this equal right, to be imitated abroad, as the cornerstone of French modernity. He saw its po-



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  41

tential to shake the foundations of the ancien régime and usher in a fairer society of smallholders. Tocqueville furthermore interpreted egalitarian inheritance as a l­egal framework that would ease f­ amily relations: the f­ ather lost his power to disinherit, and the eldest son lost his rights over his younger siblings.5 In the same spirit, sociologist Anne Gotman’s book on inheritance in France in the 1980s showed how “disgusted” families w ­ ere “to find [themselves] worried, or even divided, by material questions” in the late twentieth ­century.6 Conflicts casting doubt on parental and filial love can be avoided when parents appear to give each of their ­children equivalent shares and c­ hildren do not challenge the equity of the provisions of their parents’ estate. Laura Smet used her love of her ­father to justify her denunciation of the provisions of his ­w ill. She also spotlighted the highly symbolic issue of the management of the singer’s musical legacy. While Laeticia Hallyday was a full-­time wife and m ­ other, and their a­ dopted d ­ aughters Jade and Joy ­were still ­children, David and Laura had both embraced artistic ­c areers, as a singer and an actress. Their l­egal action was intended to “safeguard [their] ­father’s work,” which, they argued, they ­were better equipped to do than ­either their stepmother or their half-­sisters. This was especially so for David, who followed in his ­father’s footsteps and became a musician, singer, and composer. He composed the a­ lbum Sang pour sang (Blood for Blood, but also a pun that when spoken aloud sounds like “100 ­percent”) for his f­ather, thus binding their kinship-­based professional relationship. Retracing all father-­son collaborations from David’s birth to the disputed estate, one Belgian website eloquently dubbed him “David Hallyday, the worthy heir.”7 The transfer of wealth is always a part of f­ amily economic arrangements where much is at stake. ­Family wealth must be transferred, not squandered, and it must go to the right p ­ eople, b­ ecause not all heirs are deemed equally worthy. This chapter draws on ­family case studies and statistical data to describe and explain such arrangements. It examines the transfer of assets and social status from one generation to the next in a variety of ­family configurations, focusing on the existence of masculine and feminine roles in such pro­cesses. It ultimately demonstrates that ­family preoccupation with the accumulation and intergenerational transfer of wealth is usually assuaged at the expense of ­women.

42   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

­Family Economic Arrangements and Social Reproduction It is difficult to understand a par­tic­u­lar ­family’s economic arrangements and their ac­cep­tance by ­family members without also discussing ­family strategies of social reproduction. According to Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-­ Claude Passeron,8 “reproduction” involves mechanisms that preserve a social hierarchy over a long period and maintain the distribution of individual positions within that hierarchy. In daily life, ­people develop ­family strategies to maintain or improve social status: parents, for example, work especially hard on fostering their ­children’s status, as well as their own and that of their relatives. ­Family strategies of social reproduction can take many forms, playing out in marriage, fertility, estate planning, and schooling strategies, to name but a few. Th ­ ese vari­ous strategies work together as a system, although the ­people pursuing them are not necessarily aware of the implications of what they are ­doing. In Bourdieu’s words, ­there is a practical sense to social reproduction that does not necessarily arise from intentional choice.9 At the beginning of the 2000s, one of us (Sibylle) studied a baker’s f­ amily near Bordeaux. The case aptly illustrates the implementation of a f­amily strategy of social reproduction involving the transfer of a ­family business. The data for this ­family case study was collected during long recorded interviews with each f­ amily member. In 1992, baker Marcelle Pilon was retiring, and had to choose her successor to the f­ amily business. A w ­ idow for fifteen years, she de­cided to give the bakery and its large attached h ­ ouse to her son Pierre, who was 43 years old and had been working with Marcelle making pastry. But Pierre had three s­isters. As a part of the inter vivos distribution written up in the notaire’s office, Marcelle’s three ­daughters would each receive real estate, but a prob­lem remained: the value of the ­sisters’ respective shares was of an order of magnitude smaller than what Pierre was getting. To equalize the division of assets in accordance with the Civil Code, the notarized document thus stated that Pierre would provide two of his ­sisters who lived nearby with ­free bread and pastries, daily, for over a de­cade. This agreement was scrupulously followed by Pierre and his s­ isters for ten years, u ­ nder the watchful eye of their ­mother, who made sure each deserved baguette and croissant was delivered.



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  43

On paper, the agreement could seem precise and fair. Yet Sibylle’s ethnographic study revealed an impor­tant fact that all had neglected to mention: an old gift had been deliberately left out of the calculations. In the 1960s, the Pilon parents had purchased a pastry business for their son Pierre, then 14 years old. Pierre would l­ater merge this business with his parents’ bread bakery to become the sole owner of both. The value of a small rural pastry business is not trivial (50,000 to 100,000 euros), but this amount was never included in the official estate partitioning. When asked about this in interviews, Marcelle Pilon and her ­children all justified the omission by the fact that Pierre had supposedly turned down alternative ­career choices to take over the ­family business, all for the good of the ­family. And, unlike his s­isters, he did not go to college. Marcelle was able to say precisely how much she and her husband had spent on their ­daughters’ educations, and she claimed she had had to sell a flour mill in the 1960s to pay for them. It all added up. The m ­ atter was never fully settled, however. When Sibylle asked the ­sisters explic­itly about the fairness of this arrangement, they first reiterated ­these justifications and then proceeded to relate parts of the story that challenged the official version. It turned out that the s­ isters had all worked at some time or other in their parents’ shop for f­ ree, while their b­ rother was rapidly given a wage and a percentage of pastry sales. Besides, selling the mill had largely covered the cost of the girls’ studies, since one left school at 17, and the other two received scholarships while working for their parents for f­ree. The s­isters had legitimate grievances but had not dared to bring them up in front of the notaire. As Roseline explained, “What the three of us did not want—­Micheline, Monique, and I—­above all, we d ­ idn’t want to start a quarrel.” Good f­amily relations ­were preserved in the name of maintaining the ­family business, which dominated considerations of fairness between the siblings. The Pilon ­daughters never aired their grievances ­because they knew their b­ rother’s story could be recast to his advantage: it could also be said that it was no privilege to have received the f­ amily’s business legacy, and that Pierre had actually sacrificed himself by taking over the ­family bakery. ­Family strategies of social reproduction are collective. In the case of the Pilon f­ amily, it was impor­tant for Pierre’s s­ isters that the bakery remain in the ­family ­because the shop provided a locally situated social status to the

44   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

entire ­family. At the collective level, ­there was a certain logic to the way the Pilon ­family planned the transfer of the ­family business. The parents did invest in their ­daughters’ educations, which paid off, as Monique became a school principal and Roseline became a town councilor.10 ­These vari­ous strategic ele­ments permitted the accumulation of positions that maintained the ­family’s local social status. The notion of a ­family strategy explains the coherence of ­these decisions: ­ ere is a strategy at a par­tic­u­lar point in a game when the player, Th instead of making a decision at each juncture, begins to anticipate upcoming moves (temporal coherence), makes them according to a princi­ple (spatial coherence), and, as a result, follows a par­tic­u­lar course of action. It is of ­little importance ­whether the player follows the strategy consciously or not; what ­matters most is coherence. The strategy is thus what we must assume to be the basis for practices that are objectively oriented ­towards the same end.11

The ­family wealth arrangements Sibylle observed ­were the result of strategies that ­were developed through a series of coherent choices based on assessments of the potential social dispositions, limitations, and resources of each member of the ­family in the ­future. Families do not prepare ­women and men for the ­future in the same way. In the Pilon f­ amily, the s­ isters learned it was normal to work for f­ ree, as a disinterested way of helping out when the ­family business needed it. They also learned it would be necessary to accumulate educational capital in order to find wage-­earning work elsewhere. Their b­ rother learned it was normal for his work to be valued and remunerated. He enjoyed the in­de­ pen­dence and profitability of economic capital inherited at an early age, and quickly became invested in the economic welfare of the ­family business without ever having to look elsewhere for work. In this way, the f­ amily produced gendered individuals who ­were taught to play differentiated and ranked roles according to the family strategy of social reproduction.

The “Favorite Son” in Business-­Owning Families This configuration granting a male heir a specific role in the f­ amily social reproduction strategy and associated assets is not specific to this f­ amily of bakers in France. It occurs more generally in most families with a business



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  45

to pass along. In all sectors of the economy—­agriculture, the trades, commerce, industry, or services—­having parents in business is a determining ­factor in setting up one’s own business. Farmers are remarkable for their massive transfer of self-­employment (83 ­percent of farmers have at least one self-­employed parent), but this phenomenon is hardly negligible in other sectors where business owner­ship is the norm: 50 ­percent of business heads, 47 ­percent of in­de­pen­dent professionals, and 45 ­percent of tradespeople and shop o­ wners have self-­employed or business-­owning parents.12 Significantly, it is usually sons (more often eldest sons) who inherit the f­ amily business or more generally choose business owner­ship when their parents owned their own business. From a very early age, ­these boys are subjected to an intense socialization meant to impart a taste for a par­tic­u­lar trade, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a desire to own their own business, all intimately tied to the transfer of professional assets. Céline observed this among winegrowing families in the Cognac region, and anthropologist Sylvia Yanagisako describes the same in the silk industry in northern Italy.13 As in the Pilon f­amily, girls are also initiated into the f­ amily business b­ ecause they are often asked to lend a hand, but families rarely financially include them in the f­ amily business by paying them wages, giving them shares in the business, or grooming them as presumptive heirs to ­family productive assets. From the moment ­there is one boy among the siblings, he ­will be the most likely to take over the f­amily business, and every­body ­will think this the obvious outcome. Parents are more likely to transfer their professional and managerial skills to a child if they are sure that the child ­will make the business flourish, and they see this potential more in boys than in girls. Sociologist Bernard Zarca speaks of a child’s “projected value” for his or her parents. He shows that business-­owning parents are more invested in socializing a child to self-­employment and a par­tic­u­lar occupation if parent and child are of the same sex category.14 This parental realism is not without some truth. Even if a f­ ather initiates his d ­ aughter in the skills of his occupation with the intention of passing his business on to her, it does ­little to protect the young ­woman from ­running into all manner of insurmountable difficulties when trying to pursue that occupation. In Cognac, for example, t­here are few ­daughters in a position to take over the f­amily vineyard, although it does happen if they have no b­ rothers or if the ­brother is ineligible due to poor

46   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

health or disability. When d ­ aughters set out to take over the business, they encounter obstacles unknown to sons of winegrowers: they strug­gle to find other growers willing to give them internships, banks d ­ on’t believe in them enough to grant them loans, local government commissions are reluctant to authorize them to buy farmland, and the list goes on. Then t­ here are ­family difficulties, most significantly the role of young ­women’s husbands in the operation. Céline followed the setbacks suffered by Mylène Garmond, a young w ­ oman who took over her f­amily’s winegrowing operations in the early 2000s. Without a b­ rother, she benefited from f­amily socialization in the trade and business owner­ship, to which she added a solid education in grape-­growing and winemaking. But Mylène’s takeover hit a snag when she became romantically involved with an unemployed electrician who hesitated between investing in his partner’s vineyard (an idea that his in-­laws found unacceptable, convinced that he lacked the requisite skills) or seeking a job in town, far from the vineyard. Fifteen years ­later, Mylène had given up winegrowing and was applying her business skills to helping her husband with his electrical and plumbing business. In addition to gender, f­ amily socialization also differs according to birth order. The business-­owning c­ hildren of business o­ wners are more often than not the eldest.15 Taken together, sex category and birth order combine to create a dif­fer­ent likelihood for each child of ­r unning a business as their parents did. Among the only sons of business-­owning parents, 37 ­percent own their own business; this is true for 28 ­percent of only ­daughters. When business-­owning parents have multiple c­ hildren, their ­children’s likelihood of business owner­ship varies accordingly: 30 ­percent of eldest sons, 27 ­percent of younger sons, 18 ­percent of eldest d ­ aughters, and 17 ­percent of younger ­daughters own a business. Figures are similar when it comes to taking up the ­family business: 25  ­percent of only sons inherit their parents’ business, compared to 19 ­percent of only d ­ aughters. When ­t here are many siblings, the eldest son is the most probable heir (21 ­percent continue their parents’ business), followed by younger ­brothers (18 ­percent continue their parents’ business). D ­ aughters, ­whether eldest or younger, take over their parents’ business only 11 ­percent of the time. All in all, when it comes to inheriting the f­ amily business, being a girl is a greater handicap than being a younger sibling.



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  47

“It’s Just Like Salic Law!” Just a few years ago, this in­equality might have seemed like a residual phenomenon that only concerned the declining numbers of small-­business ­owners pushed to the margins by the gradual expansion of the wage-­earning society. As we saw in Chapter 1, however, the decline in business owner­ship and self-­employment has recently halted in France and throughout Eu­rope. Furthermore, the proportion of individuals from business-­owning families remains quite large in France to this day. In some families, wealth transfers play out as if arranged by a subconscious small-­business-­owner algorithm. The figure of the “favorite son” has demonstrated a particularly impressive staying power well into the twenty-­ first ­century. Consider the case of Sylvain Coulemelle. A student at Sciences Po, a prestigious and selective college in Paris, he is the perfect embodiment of “the favorite (­grand)son” in a ­family that has gradually converted its modest economic capital into cultural capital.16 And he knows it: “At the third generation, I am the designated heir!” he bragged to us in an interview. To understand how this came to be, one must retrace the genealogy of the Renoir ­family, that of Sylvain’s ­mother, Christine. In the 1950s René and Jacqueline Renoir, both from farming families, opened a chartered accountancy office in the small town of Segré, in the Loire Valley. One did not need a higher degree to practice accounting in France at the time. Within a few years, the ­couple had three ­children: Françoise, Jean-­Paul, and Christine (see Figure 2.1). Just like the Pilon ­family, the most likely outcome would have been for the son to shoulder responsibility for the ­family business with his ­sisters’ approval. Unfortunately, Jean-­Paul Renoir was not in the best situation to take over an accountant’s office, for lack of an appropriate education: he got a secondary-­level vocational diploma in auto mechanics, while his older ­sister, Françoise, earned a college degree in En­glish. Jean-­Paul was also less invested in the business than was his younger ­sister, Christine, who had completed secondary education on the academic track and worked for her parents as a paid part-­time secretary. Nevertheless, it was to Jean-­Paul that his f­ ather entrusted his clientele in 1980. However, by this time full-­fledged accountants ­were required to have a higher degree, and Jean-­Paul lacked the qualifications to take over his parents’ office. He became an associate

48   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL Jacqueline 1922

Seamstress then assistant to her husband (father farm laborer and itinerant distilller)

Françoise 1951

Paul 1953

Director of a Homemaker (undergraduate big company degree in English)

Benoît 1985

Jean-Paul 1954

René 1920–1985

Private accountant (parents land-owning farmers)

Chantal 1955

Secretary Real estate agent (vocational baccalaureat in automobile mechanics)

Tristan Véronique Jean-François Julia 1995

1980

1982

1990

Christine 1957

Alain 1951

Homemaker Primary school teacher (performing secretarial (father vineyard worker, suties for the family) mother seamstress and domestic worker)

Claire Sylvain Jérémie Samuel Théo 1977

1980

1982

1991

1994

figure 2.1. ​Genealogical Chart of the Coulemelle / Renoir ­family.

in an accountant’s office in Angers instead, bringing his clientele with him. In 2000, he sold his client list to his associate and used the money to open a real estate agency. It was successful, and a few years ­later he was able to buy a second agency. All in all, Jean-­Paul benefited significantly from the economic capital he received from his ­family early on. It had a substantial impact on his professional path and asset accumulation, despite his poor academic rec­ord and early employment insecurity. ­Today, Jean-­Paul and his wife live in a home that they both own, and that has been paid off. His advantage as the “favorite son” left an indelible mark on ­family relations. Claire Coulemelle, Christine’s eldest daughter (and Jean-­Paul’s niece), described the story as follows in 2002: My grand­father [René] gave his clientele to my u ­ ncle [Jean-­Paul], which was worth a lot of money ­because it was an enormous client list. [René] gave it away without asking for any payment! I know all this from my mom, not from my grandma. My ­mother and her ­sister said “OK, Fine. [Jean-­Paul] wants to be an accountant. It ­doesn’t interest us. We ­don’t need the client list. But it is worth a lot of money.” So it seems that when [René] passed the clients on to my ­uncle, he should have given some money to his other two



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  49

­ aughters. At least my mom and dad received some money, I d think, [when they purchased their home]. But I’m not sure it was comparable. I think it was nothing like the value of the client list, even though such a clientele cannot ­really be assigned a market value. My mom never ­stopped saying afterwards “your Grandma says we owe her money, but she ­doesn’t remember that ­Daddy [René] gave Jean-­Paul a huge gift! If ­Daddy ­hadn’t been ­there, Jean-­Paul would be nothing. He never had the means of developing a clientele. He never got a degree. He never even went to college.” So anyway, [Jean-­Paul] owes a lot to [René].

Wealth transfers have not yet taken place for Claire’s generation. Nonetheless, ­there are several indications that Claire’s b­ rother, Sylvain Coulemelle, is “the favorite grand­son” of grand­mother Jacqueline, now a w ­ idow. Sylvain is not the eldest of the grandchildren (his ­sister Claire is two years older), but he is the eldest grand­son. In addition, he grew up near his grand­ mother in Segré, unlike his cousins, who grew up farther away in Angers and Brussels. Sylvain’s cousin Jean-­François Renoir, only two years younger, could have been the designated heir b­ ecause he carries the ­family name, but as a student at Sciences Po Sylvain has a far more illustrious academic ­career than Jean-­François, who barely passed his baccalauréat exam ­after high school and then ended his studies. From an academic point of view, only Sylvain’s older ­sister, Claire, who graduated from the prestigious and selective École Normale Supérieure, can rival him—­but she is a girl. Sylvain Coulemelle’s cultural capital, combined with his gender, birth order, and locally rooted childhood, have thus all but guaranteed his position as the ­family’s designated heir. In 2000, when grand­mother Jacqueline Renoir went to witness her son Jean-­Paul’s sale of the ­family client list to an accountant out of the ­family, it was Sylvain, then aged 22, whom she asked to accompany her to the notaire’s office. His older ­sister, Claire, concluded, “In mom’s ­family, boys are always favored over girls. So Jean-­Paul is my grand­mother’s favorite son, we all agree on that. Just like Sylvain was my ­mother’s favorite son for a long time. . . . ​It’s just like Salic Law, it’s unbelievable!”17 Over three generations the Renoir f­ amily incarnated the changes occurring in the French workforce over the twentieth c­ entury: the f­ amily members, with farming roots, are now part of the ­middle and upper classes,

50   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

some through the “meritocracy” of the educational system and o­ thers as white-­collar business ­owners who embody new forms of professional in­de­ pen­dence.18 Observable in t­ hese widening social groups is a social mechanism similar to t­ hose Pierre Bourdieu described in farming families in the Béarn: the early choice of a male successor who ­will maintain the ­family’s social status and become the favored heir to its assets.19 This privilege of masculine inheritance, which many thought had died out with the decline of nobility and peasantry, is still very pre­sent in the general population in France, even though transfers of economic capital now have to align with the accumulation of cultural capital.

­Things That Must Be Kept We can situate t­ hese observations from the Coulemelle f­ amily among the French population at large thanks to the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies’s (INSEE) Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine) of nearly 10,000 h ­ ouse­holds. In 2015, it found that the inheritance and inter vivos gifts received by male ­children of business ­owners ­were more often composed of professional assets than ­were ­those received by female ­children. The gap is even wider when one compares transfers to all d ­ aughters and transfers to firstborn sons. Furthermore, business-­owning families are not the only configuration showing differences in the type of assets being transferred according to sex category and birth order. Analy­sis of all ­house­holds reveals that inter vivos gifts and inheritances destined for sons (and even more so t­ hose destined for firstborn sons) are significantly more likely to include housing without usufruct: it is usually the f­ amily home, owner­ship of which is transferred to the firstborn son a­ fter the death of one of the parents with the proviso that the surviving parent have use of the home ­until her or his death. The same disparities are found in inheritance of securities, shares of a ­family business, and land. Sons, especially firstborn sons, are the priority heirs for specific physical assets (businesses, ­houses, land), while transfers of money also (or rather) concern ­daughters, as when Christine Renoir’s parents helped her buy a ­house. Anthropologists have long noted the distinction between “­things that are given, ­things that are sold and ­things that must not be given or sold, but kept.”20 Certain assets are considered precious and inalienable. Th ­ ese



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  51

“­things that must be kept” are imprinted with their former o­ wners’ personalities and histories.21 Such possessions are attributed with distinctive “powers” or “spirits.” In con­temporary French society, ­these loaded possessions include ­family businesses and homes, shares in or partial owner­ ship of a com­pany, and plots of land. They circulate in a specific manner from one generation to the next: they are generally gifted rather than sold, and preferentially given to men, in par­tic­u­lar to firstborn sons. Yet the Civil Code must be abided by. The c­ hildren who do not receive ­these special assets must get some form of compensation—­typically money. Forty-­nine ­percent of all estate transfers to ­daughters consist entirely of money, but only 45 ­percent of ­those to sons do. When the ­family has only one child, 32 ­percent of estate transfers received by only d ­ aughters are purely monetary, compared to 26 ­percent of estate transfers received by only sons. The in­equality holds true in families with many ­children: 49 ­percent of all transfers to firstborn d ­ aughters and 54  ­percent of transfers to other ­daughters consist solely of money, while purely monetary transfers represent only 43 ­percent of transfers received by firstborn sons and 51 ­percent of transfers received by other sons (see T ­ able 2.1; see also Statistical Appendix C for a description of the methodological prob­lems in mea­sur­ing inequalities related to birth order). Though t­ hese differences always ­favor the same parties, they are small enough that they might seem trivial. Such an interpretation would be a ­mistake, b­ ecause statistics lump together and average out very dif­fer­ent situations, including some where gendered favoritism is a real­ity and ­others where it cannot apply. Some families have only male c­ hildren, ­others only have ­daughters. Situations arise where ­t here is no leeway in how to distribute the inheritance: where all of the assets are liquid, or where the only asset is a piece of real estate and no heir can afford to buy out the o­ thers, so it must be sold. And then t­ here are the situations where the division of wealth w ­ ill likely be gendered: “the t­ hings one must keep” w ­ ill be given to the firstborn son, while liquid assets ­will be given to every­one e­ lse. The specific role of sons, especially firstborn sons, manifests itself not only in the nature of the assets received, but in the timing of their transfer. Sons are more likely to receive their share before d ­ aughters, in the form of inter vivos gifts. Such gifts represent 33 ­percent of all estate transfers received by ­women, but 38 ­percent of ­those received by men. This temporal gap in f­ avor of men exists regardless of the ­family configuration. Inter vivos

52   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

­table 2.1. ​Type of inheritance received by heirs, by sex category and birth order Percentage of estate transfers consisting of . . . ​

Sex and birth order

professional assets*

housing (without usufruct)

securities

All sons All ­daughters Only son Only ­daughter Firstborn son Firstborn ­daughter Other sons Other ­daughters

7.4 3.6 17.9 7.1 7.7 3.4 4.6 2.8

8.4 6.3 15.6 9.4 8.9 6.8 5.6 4.7

3.6 2.1 4.8 2.2 3.9 2.0 2.9 2.2

land

exclusively money

Percentage of transfers received as gifts

17.7 14.5 17.2 14.1 18.8 14.9 16.4 14.2

44.6 51.3 26.0 31.7 43.4 48.8 51.4 53.9

37.6 33.4 45.2 40.3 40.2 37.1 32.4 27.3

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: All estate transfers received by the h ­ ouse­hold person of reference and his or her partner / spouse (if they have one) in French h ­ ouse­holds (N = 9,497). For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. * All of the transfers received by the person of reference and partner / spouse (if they have one) in French h ­ ouse­holds, where at least one of their parents was self-­employed or owned their own business (N = 4,291). Read: “26.0 ­percent of estate transfers received by only sons consisted exclusively of money.” Chi-­square tests w ­ ere applied to t­ hese cross-­tabulations to establish the significance of the observed correlations. They all presented correlations with a significance level of 1 ­percent.

gifts make up 45 ­percent of estate transfers received by only sons, as compared to 40 ­percent of transfers received by only ­daughters; 40 ­percent of estate transfers to firstborn sons as opposed to 37 ­percent of ­those to firstborn ­daughters; and 32 ­percent of transfers to other sons, but only 27 ­percent of transfers to other ­daughters. Receiving an endowment early in life is an obvious advantage for the accumulation of wealth during a lifetime, and it immediately increases opportunities to lead the life one wishes to lead.

A ­Father’s ­Family Name, and His Patrimony The word patrimoine (patrimony) is commonly used in French (and occasionally in En­glish) to designate the rights that an individual possesses over certain assets. From the Latin patrimonium, it means that which comes from the ­father (pater is ­father, munire means to provide), as if only ­fathers possessed goods worthy of transfer to the next generation. This logic also reigns over ­family surnames, patronymes in French—in other words, the ­father’s name.22



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  53

In French history, ­fathers ­were long the only parent who could pass their ­family surname on to the next generation, ­whether it be to ­children born in a marriage or o­ thers that the f­ather formally recognized as his own. ­Children have been allowed to bear the name of ­either or both of their parents (in any order) only since it was made pos­si­ble by law in 2005. In the absence of a specific request, however, the ­father’s name is attributed by default. ­Until 2013, the ­father’s name was still imposed in cases where ­there was a disagreement. In practice, f­athers’ names continue to predominate. According to the most recent statistics, 83 ­percent of ­children born in 2014 bear solely their ­father’s name.23 This proportion rises to 95 ­percent if the child was born to a married ­couple. One child in ten bears a double ­family name: 8 ­percent bear their ­father’s name followed by their ­mother’s, while the other 2 ­percent bear the ­mother’s name first. As for the 7 ­percent of ­children who bear only their m ­ other’s name, the French statistical institute estimates that in nine cases out of ten it is b­ ecause the ­father did not recognize the child as his own at birth. A man’s name is also imposed on his wife. In France, no law compels a ­woman to take the name of her husband, but de­cades of administrative practice have obscured this right b­ ehind imposed custom, as illustrated by the per­sis­tent but legally inappropriate term “maiden name” (nom de jeune fille), which is still featured on many official forms. In 1995, 91 ­percent of married ­women used their spouse’s name.24 ­There are no more-­recent statistics: the practice has prob­ably diminished b­ ecause ­couples are marrying at a l­ater age. All the same, in a recent study of ­women who had not wished to “take their husband’s name,” interviewees described strong re­sis­tance from their families, friends, and coworkers, and how their husband’s name was imposed anyway, in a variety of contexts.25 As for the opposite scenario—­a married man bearing his wife’s f­ amily name—­very few p ­ eople are even aware that it is legally pos­si­ble in France t­ oday. The law no longer requires the subordination of married w ­ omen to their husbands’ ­family names or that the latter be passed on to their sons, but such is still the usual practice in France. It is also true in North Amer­i­ca, for example, where officially egalitarian ­legal frameworks coexist with highly asymmetrical practices.26 This is significant. Society grants men a symbolic asset—­their f­ amily name—­that they can transfer to their ­children and impose on their wives as if to mark their overriding position in f­ amily strategies of social reproduction. At the next generation, sons inherit a stable,

54   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

transferable name, and ­because of this some ­will describe them as the sauve-­ race, meaning the one “saving” the f­ amily’s “breed” from symbolic extinction; ­mothers and d ­ aughters are not attributed with this quality. This fundamental in­equality, which the law seems powerless to balance, is one cog in the machine favoring male appropriation of wealth.

From the “Favorite Son” to Conjugal Wealth In­equality Let’s return to the story of Pierre Pilon, the baker near Bordeaux who repaid his ­sisters with a de­cade of fresh baked goods. In 1979, aged 31, he married a ­woman named Gisèle. At this point, Pierre’s professional ­career was already well underway, in no small part due to the inheritance he had already received. The reader ­will recall that he was first given the pastry business, and then his m ­ other entrusted him with the f­amily home, attached to the bakery. Gisèle was only 22  years old when she married Pierre. Her parents ­were jewelers in Paris, and she knew her ­future husband from annual ­family vacations in the town. Unlike her husband, Gisèle had received no inter vivos gifts. At best, p ­ eople in town saw her parents as bohemians with an artistic streak (Gisèle’s ­brother became a famous sculptor) who sold knickknacks in their Paris shop. At worst, Gisèle’s f­ amily was seen as a bunch of “welfare cases,” eco­nom­ically irresponsible and a bit crazy. Gisèle had not taken the baccalauréat exam capping secondary studies and had no established occupation, although she had held a few entry-­level jobs. It was obvious to all involved that the ­couple should live in the ­family home attached to the bakery, both of which would eventually become Pierre’s exclusive property. This configuration is statistically rare. Let’s consider all different-­sex ­couples, e­ ither married or living together, in the French Wealth Survey, 2014–2015. Only 8.1 ­percent of different-­sex ­couples’ primary residences are owned solely by the male partner. The opposite configuration is even rarer: only 4.6 ­percent of ­couples’ primary residences are the female partner’s exclusive property. ­These unequal property configurations are more frequent for other types of real estate. Only 52 ­percent of secondary homes are owned equally by both partners, while 27 ­percent are owned by the man (­either exclusively, or as a majority share, or as a co-­owner with o­ thers outside of the ­house­hold, as when a ­house is jointly inherited with siblings), and 19 ­percent are owned mostly by the ­woman (see T ­ able 2.2; see also Sta-



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  55

­table 2.2. ​Who owns the real estate possessed by ­house­holds in which the “person of reference” is in a different-­sex relationship (­percent) Who owns the real estate:

Use of the real estate: Primary residence Secondary residence Made available for ­free use Rented all or part of the year Vacant All together

Man and ­woman equally

­Woman Man majority majority Man W share, share, ­ oman with man ­woman with other Man ­Woman minority minority other share share only only ­people ­people

Man and ­woman with other ­people

81.4 51.6

8.1 14.5

4.6 11.5

2.9 1.6

1.8 0.4

0.3 10.6

0.4 6.9

0.5 2.9

33.9

8.9

12.5

0.9

1.2

19.0

18.8

4.8

54.3

18.3

11.0

1.0

0.3

6.8

4.6

3.7

38.8 70.9

15.9 10.8

17.0 7.0

0.8 2.3

0.5 1.4

17.8 3.6

7.5 2.6

1.7 1.4

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: Real estate owned by h ­ ouse­holds in France where the person of reference lives in a different-­sex ­couple. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: 8.1 ­percent of the primary residences of different-­sex ­couples are owned exclusively by the man.

tistical Appendix B for a description of how the individual wealth of ­women and men ­were reconstructed). In the case of a primary residence, property in­equality has practical implications: not only does the w ­ oman own fewer assets than the man, but the man’s ­family and professional obligations largely determine where the ­couple lives. In interviews, Pierre Pilon recounted Gisèle’s challenges in living near her mother-­and sisters-­in-­law and resuming work ­after a long break. By the time of the interviews, Gisèle was spending considerable time and money commuting to her civil ser­vice job in Bordeaux. Gisèle and Pierre Pilon’s age difference of nine years also played a key role in their unequal accumulation of wealth. Th ­ ere is nothing unusual about such an age difference—in France in 2012, only 3 out of 10 cohabitating different-­sex ­couples had an age difference of a year or less—­and it is similarly common in many other countries in the world.27 In 6 ­couples out of 10, the man was older; in only 1 c­ ouple out of 10, the w ­ oman was

56   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

older (although this proportion is growing).28 Being the oldest in the c­ ouple not only means a more advanced ­career, but also implies, all other ­things being equal, a greater chance of inheriting or accumulating wealth from savings begun ­earlier in one’s working life. In all likelihood, this initial wealth in­equality w ­ ill only increase during the c­ ouple’s time together. When domestic partners are close in age, they are also more likely to start out with similar levels of personal assets that they can invest in community property if they marry, or in jointly owned property if they do not. In Gisèle and Pierre Pilon’s case, as in many ­others, the man’s position as his ­family’s “favorite son” is compounded by the fact that he is older and contributes ­little to the ­house­work, and by gender in­equality in the ­labor market that pays higher wages to men than to ­women. Gisèle de­cided to set her c­ areer aside for a while and agreed to live in a h ­ ouse that was not hers ­because she was raising their young ­children and, without a university degree, had no hope of finding employment that would pay enough to cover the costs of daycare and commuting. Dif­fer­ent types of gender in­ equality add up over the course of f­ amily life, giving more and more power to the man while his partner’s economic situation, already at a disadvantage from the start, weakens relative to his.

Inheritance, Power, and Wealth In­equality in ­Couples What happens in ­couples where the ­woman comes from a wealthier background than her partner? The next case explains why w ­ omen in con­ temporary France have ­little chance of being the eco­nom­ically power­ful partner in a c­ ouple, even when the initial situation seemed to give them the advantage. Let us return to the Renoir f­ amily in the Loire Valley, and shift our gaze to the youn­gest ­daughter, Christine. We have already seen that her ­brother, Jean-­Paul, benefited from being the “favorite son”: he was given the client list of the ­family accounting business, which secured him a stable professional and economic position. Christine also received financial assistance—­ though of far lesser value—­when she bought a home with her husband, Alain Coulemelle. A teacher in Segré, Alain received no inheritance from his parents, who w ­ ere a vineyard worker and a seamstress; as he put it in an interview, “Basically, Christine came from an affluent ­family, and I from a very modest one.”



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  57

In 2002, Christine and Alain Coulemelle moved: Alain’s salary as a teacher and Christine’s modest income (partly from her part-­time work in her ­brother’s real estate agency) ­were not enough to cover the mortgage while maintaining a reasonably comfortable lifestyle for themselves and their five ­children. ­A fter a long period of occasional financial help from Christine’s ­family, they sold the property and moved into the subsidized apartment of the school where Alain had become principal, a perk of his position. Both considered this a temporary solution. The c­ ouple dreamed of moving into Christine’s parents’ vacation home, a small ­house on the Vendée coast, south of Nantes, where the Renoir ­family spent most of its summer vacations. Alain could request a transfer to a school in Vendée (an option for teachers in France, where the education system is national) and his request had a chance of bearing fruit in the coming years. Christine thought that this ­house might be considered her share of her parents’ estate. In interviews, however, Christine and her ­children all wondered if Christine’s b­ rother and ­sister would object. What if they insisted on joint owner­ship of the Vendée h ­ ouse to keep it as a f­ amily vacation home? What if they asked Christine and Alain to buy them out ­after a formal property assessment, which might raise its price, making the ­house unaffordable? ­These concerns w ­ ere not unfounded. Christine was well aware of her weak position in her ­family of origin, in which her ­brother, Jean-­Paul, the real estate agent, and her older s­ ister, Françoise (whose husband was the CEO of a large firm in Brussels), usually had the upper hand. During one interview, Christine’s eldest d ­ aughter, Claire, relayed her ­mother’s concerns: Mom wanted [the h ­ ouse in the Vendée] as her inheritance and to receive less money. But she said, “I’m sure Françoise and Jean-­Paul ­will put up roadblocks, saying that the ­house is worth too much money, that it would be too big a share [of the inheritance], I mean, that it w ­ ouldn’t be a fair share.” Then, Mom says “Well, it’s unfair. Françoise and Jean-­Paul have lots of money, and besides, they ­don’t care about this ­house, they never go ­there. I ­don’t see why it should be any of their business.” Then, Mom says, “It’s only to annoy us that they oppose the idea. It’s just to remind us that they have more money, so they have the power, so o­ thers ­can’t do what they want.”

58   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

In the end, Christine’s husband, Alain, settled the ­matter alone, without consulting his wife or c­ hildren: he would not ask for a transfer to the Vendée. Two months l­ater, in October 2001, Alain and Christine’s eldest son, Sylvain, confided to us in a long interview. The latest twist is that my f­ather said that he had never actually seriously considered buying the ­house in the Vendée. And now, I remember . . . ​it must have been late June or early July, my parents ­were at the ­house with my ­brother Jérémie, and I remember watching my m ­ other and ­brother walking around the h ­ ouse, starting to make plans and every­thing, and my ­mother up all night thinking about the layout of the rooms, and my ­brother was thinking about where the electrical outlets should go, b­ ecause both of them are ­really into t­ hose t­ hings. So when I think about it now, I won­der, what on earth was my ­father thinking at the time?

Alain Coulemelle gave us his version of the story in an interview a year l­ ater. He saw the sale of their previous home as allowing them to “pay back the sort of f­ amily debts that we would have had trou­ble escaping,” and he expressed his fear of “falling back into renovations and loans.” Alain was able to use his professional position to ­free himself from the relations of domination binding him to his in-­laws. In short, the husband’s more favorable position in the ­labor market allowed him to balance a situation dominated by the relative wealth of his in-­laws. Meanwhile, Christine’s potential advantages as an heir to a wealthier f­ amily ­were offset by her position as youn­gest ­daughter: although her ­family did have wealth to pass down, it did not consider her the most legitimate heir. One can easily imagine how dif­fer­ent ­things would have been if Christine had been the one to inherit her parents’ client list. A ­ fter all, such an outcome would have been plausible: she had a higher education than her ­brother, and she had often worked for her parents and ­brother, for f­ree or as a part-­time paid employee. The final arrangement also might have been dif­fer­ent if Christine had been 24 and Alain 18 when they got married, instead of the other way around; if Alain had supported Christine’s ­c areer by, for instance, working part-­time so he could take care of the ­children; or if Christine’s options had not depended so much on her husband being transferred to another region. Christine’s story illustrates all the obstacles that stand in the way of a ­woman hoping



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  59

to convince her husband to live in a h ­ ouse he does not consider his own: Alain Coulemelle repeated “It’s not our home” several times during his interview. He had the last word. In different-­sex ­couples, a variety of ­factors combine to give men greater economic power than their partners. ­Because of the dif­fer­ent positions of men and w ­ omen in their respective families of origin, b­ ecause of how the matrimonial market operates (bringing together older men and younger ­women), and b­ ecause of gender in­equality on the ­labor market (conferring higher salaries and faster-­developing, uninterrupted, full-­time c­ areers to men), men are more likely to have the requisite income and / or assets to make impor­tant decisions that commit the ­couple, without fear of pushback from their partners. Few ­women can say the same. In sum, wealth in­equality ­favors men, not only in terms of official owner­ship rights—­men do own more assets than w ­ omen—­but also when one considers who can make decisions about the c­ ouple’s collective assets.

In the F ­ amily and on the ­Labor Market, a Per­sis­tently Unequal Dynamic The position of ­women in the l­abor market has changed since the mid-­ twentieth ­century. Occupations formerly inaccessible to ­women (especially in sectors requiring high qualifications, such as medicine or law) have slowly opened up, but ­women’s ­careers are still circumscribed by many glass walls and ceilings. Although girls perform better than boys in school, they are socialized to study subjects that lead to lower-­paying and less prestigious jobs. Even ­today, ­women are over-­represented in job sectors that pay less, such as administration, health care, social work, and personal care.29 Although ­women who have ­children stop working for shorter periods of time, and less frequently, than they did in the 1950s and 1960s, they are nonetheless more likely than men to have part-­time jobs (this is particularly true in Eu­rope relative to the United States).30 This has two consequences: ­women earn less (a part-­time job means a partial salary) and their ­careers pro­gress slower. In the public and private sectors alike, ­women hit a glass ceiling that keeps them from the most prestigious and best-­paying jobs.31 All t­ hese ­factors help explain why w ­ omen earn, on average, about one-­ quarter less than men. But even when all other ­things are equal (the same age, se­niority, job sector, position, years of employment, and so on), the

60   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

l­abor market still discriminates against ­women, providing them with a salary 10.5 ­percent lower than their male counter­parts.32 This per­sis­tent in­equality is intertwined with other disparities that play out in private f­amily life. W ­ omen do spend a l­ittle less time on domestic tasks t­ oday than they did in the 1980s (in France it dropped by 56 minutes per day between 1985 and 2010, while men spend a modest 10 minutes more on chores since 1985), but w ­ omen still perform two-­thirds of h ­ ouse­hold 33 ­labor, for ­free. As in the past, the arrival of a child, and each child thereafter, accentuates this gap.34 The repeated combination of in­equality in the ­labor market and at home maintains significant economic in­equality between spouses. In France, the income of a w ­ oman living in a c­ ouple averages 42 ­percent less than her partner’s. The income gap between w ­ omen and men who live alone is only 9 ­percent.35 Different-­sex conjugal relations confirm and accentuate existing economic in­equality.

Renewed Forms of Masculine Domination via Wealth Since the 1970s, t­ here has been a notable change in younger generations: breaking up has become a probable outcome for ­couples from all social backgrounds. This is impor­tant from an economic perspective b­ ecause the wealth in­equality that has subtly established itself between partners is suddenly exposed when the relationship breaks down. Among the many ­factors contributing to wealth disparities are the financial arrangements made at the time of marriage or joint investment by a cohabitating ­couple. ­These arrangements can be made through contracts such as prenuptial agreements or may take the default form laid out by marriage law. In the French Civil Code system, the standard default marital regime is “the community of assets acquired a­ fter marriage” (la communauté de biens reduite aux acquêts), or “the partial community property” for short: assets belonging to each prior to marriage (or received as inheritance or a f­amily gift ­after the marriage) remain individually owned, and non-­ family assets acquired by one or both ­after marriage belong to both equally. ­Couples may modify the basic provisions, or they could opt for another basic regime, all with the help of a notaire. For example, the “universal community” (communauté universelle) regime pools all assets of each member of the ­couple, regardless of when they w ­ ere acquired; while “separation of



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  61

property” (séparation de biens) means that each spouse w ­ ill maintain sole control over his or her assets old or new. Unmarried c­ ouples’ assets remain separate, with the exception of assets they acquire jointly—­buying a h ­ ouse together, for example—­but ­here again, the ­couple may have the notaire add specific provisions that alter the percentage of owner­ship from the default 50 / 50 split. Unmarried ­couples (as well as ­people married u ­ nder the separation-of-property regime) may also purchase property “in indivision,” each contributing a set percentage of the value of the asset for an equal percentage of owner­ship; the same term also applies to a group of heirs who jointly own parts of an estate. As with marriage contracts in common-­law countries, ­these dif­fer­ent regimes have very real consequences in the event of the death of a spouse or in case of separation. Sibylle followed Sabrina Legendre and Jérôme Giniez from the time they got together in the early 2000s ­until their divorce fifteen years ­later. In the end, Sabrina felt she had been left with “nothing,” as is often the case with ­women a­ fter separations. Let’s review some impor­tant moments in the ­couple’s history to understand how this came about. Sabrina Legendre was born in Paris in 1978 and grew up in a public housing development built for railroad workers like her ­father. ­A fter passing the baccalauréat in lit­er­a­ture and getting a vocational degree in executive administration, she wanted to live on her own, so she de­cided to leave Paris, where rents w ­ ere prohibitively high. She went to live with an aunt in the Alps while looking for work and her own apartment, and there she met Jérôme Giniez. They ­were the same age, and both ­were employed in community ser­vice jobs with Youth Protection Ser­vices. A year a­ fter they met, they de­cided to leave the Alps: their jobs w ­ ere unsatisfying and the region was heavi­ly frequented by tourists and rather expensive. A ­ fter moving several times, they settled in Charols, a town near Montélimar in the Rhône valley, where they lived in a ­house owned by Jérôme’s f­amily. His maternal grandparents, Marcel and Marie-­L ouise Saignole, ­were retired farmers who lived on a vast neighboring property in a sprawling old farm­house at the end of a stately drive lined with cypress trees. Two of their ­children had never married and still lived with them. They ­were all e­ ager to help the newlyweds. The Saignoles asked a nominal rent for the ­house where Sabrina and Jérôme lived, and often looked ­after

62   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

their two ­children, born in 2003 and 2006. Nevertheless, Sabrina and Jérôme dreamed of owning their own ­house someday. The c­ ouple’s professional situation changed. In 2004, Jérôme passed the exams to become a teacher at a vocational high school in Montélimar. Sabrina, who wanted to continue as a social worker, fluctuated between a job as an assistant to a special education teacher (for which no prior experience was required), l­imited gigs as a host in a c­ hildren’s play center, and periods of unemployment while having to juggle work (or job hunting) and caring for her c­ hildren. She was starting to regret her move to Charols, where employment and training opportunities ­were scarce, and where she felt physically and emotionally removed from her own f­ amily and friends. But an impor­tant f­ actor kept the ­couple in the region: Jérôme’s c­ areer. He was the stable breadwinner in the h ­ ouse­hold, and his specialty was taught in very few schools, which made transfers from one region to another difficult. That Jérôme’s c­ areer should be g­ oing well compared to Sabrina’s was no surprise: she bore the brunt of parenting duties and her patchy salary left her ­little control over decisions related to the c­ ouple’s housing and assets. Sabrina’s professional development was blocked by the fact that she could not question the primacy of Jérôme’s c­ areer ­because of their shared desire to become homeowners. In 2005, Jérôme and Sabrina started to talk about e­ ither inheriting or purchasing some portion of the ­house belonging to the Saignoles. They turned to Jérôme’s f­ amily resources for two reasons. First, Jérôme’s ­family owned more property than Sabrina’s. Second, Jérôme and Sabrina’s move to Charols had delighted the Saignole ­family, who saw it as the dreamt-of opportunity to root the next generation in the area. Marcel and Marie-­ Louise Saignole had been farmers, with ten hectares (twenty-­five acres) of grain and fifty head of veal calves, but to their dismay none of their four ­children had taken up the f­ amily farm—­a frequent occurrence for farmers in con­temporary France.36 Sabrina, Jérôme, and their ­children—­particularly their eldest son, Killian—­got caught up in a f­ amily strategy of social reproduction. Marcel Saignole rejoiced at the birth of his great-­grandson. Killian became the object of intense socialization efforts as the potential Saignole ­family successor, even though ­there was no longer a farm to pass along. His interest in farm machinery from a young age was enthusiastically nurtured: he was given books on the subject, taken to trade shows, offered toy tractors as



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  63

Christmas and birthday gifts, and was given rides on the neighbors’ tractors and combine harvesters. A male lineage was thus fostered between Marcel and Killian, via Jérôme. This situation in turn made it easier for Jérôme to enjoy use of his f­ amily’s assets. Jérôme had a vague desire to take over the f­ amily farm that was fostered by his grandparents’ faith in his attachment to the land. It was also partly shared by Sabrina, as they had plans to start an agritourism bed and breakfast in the outbuildings and hoped they might be able to buy one of the barns to this end. Their plans matured between 2005 and 2008. In the meantime, Sabrina alternated paid maternity leave, unpaid parental leave, and a string of unsatisfying jobs in the hopes of landing a long-­term employment contract, necessary for getting a bank loan.37 Sabrina had her doubts about the ­whole proj­ect. The Saignole f­ amily exerted social control over the young c­ ouple, which, although it was inadvertent, still weighed heavi­ly on her. The ­couple had its ups and downs. Sabrina was dissatisfied with their housing situation, and often declared more or less seriously that she wanted to return to Paris or take the kids to live with her ­mother’s ­family in Brittany, on the other side of the country. In 2008, Sabrina told Jérôme she was leaving him, before taking it back. She realized she could not move away from the region ­because she wanted to be near her c­ hildren, and she also wanted them to be near their f­ ather. At the same time, she found it hard to imagine life on her own without friends and ­family nearby, or any resources of her own. The following year Sabrina started training as a special education teacher in Valence, a city fifty kilo­meters away. Her studies gave her new perspective, and once again she started toying with the idea of buying Jérôme’s grandparents’ h ­ ouse. She was not sure she wanted to stay in the area, but she wanted to see the proj­ect through in order to “leave something for Killian and Elea.” In 2010, Jérôme’s f­ ather sold a plot of land and gave him 90,000 euros. At the same time, Sabrina’s studies seemed to guarantee full-­time employment in the f­uture, so every­thing was in place for the c­ ouple to become property ­owners. In 2011, Sabrina and Jérôme bought a wing of Jérôme’s grandparents’ ­house for a modest price. One detail of the purchase conditions dealt a hard blow to Sabrina. Jérôme’s ­father insisted that his son “protect” his advance on his inheritance by having the notaire register the origin of the money used to purchase his share of the ­house. Jérôme’s 90,000-­euro contribution was thus deemed to

64   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

be Jérôme’s exclusive property, giving him owner­ship of three-­quarters of the ­couple’s new home. Nothing required Jérôme to do so. Community of assets is the default regime for married c­ ouples in France, and cash inheritance is typically placed in joint accounts; if it is used to purchase a community asset, ­there is no need to indicate that it came from one partner rather than the ­couple. Had Jérôme not mentioned the origin of the money, the c­ ouple’s primary residence would have been an asset owned equally by husband and wife. Sabrina interpreted her father-­in-­law’s actions as evidence of mistrust. He had prob­ably cautioned his son about the consequences of a pos­si­ble divorce for the f­ amily’s assets. And the ­couple did eventually break up at the end of 2013, barely two years a­ fter buying the new h ­ ouse. Sabrina moved into subsidized housing in the town of Charols, while Jérôme kept the ­house, paying the mortgage alone. The c­ hildren alternated weeks with each parent. The divorce was settled in 2015. Sabrina got no compensation for her share of the ­house. The notaire considered that her payments only covered the interest on the mortgage. And b­ ecause she owned only one-­quarter of the ­house, it was determined that Jérôme owed her nothing. But Sabrina had paid the loan for two years, and the stability of her new job had secured them a loan with the bank. She had also contributed sweat equity, renovating their wing of the old farm­house. Moreover, she had agreed to stay in the region and put her c­ areer on hold to protect her husband’s c­ areer. None of this was recognized in the divorce ruling.

Wealth Individualization in Uncertain Times Jérôme Giniez and Sabrina Legendre’s story exemplifies a recent trend ­toward wealth individualization, which widens the gender wealth gap in ­couples.38 In France, as elsewhere in Eu­rope and in the United States, the proportion of married ­couples who divorce began to increase dramatically in the 1980s and then stabilized in the 2000s at a level where about half of all marriages end in divorce.39 Given this uncertainty, spouses tend to keep their assets separate more than before. When a divorced spouse enters a new relationship (which is much more likely for men than for ­women), he or she is more likely to avoid joining assets by not marrying or requesting a prenuptial agreement for the separation of assets.



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  65

Furthermore, fewer ­couples in the younger generations are choosing to marry.40 In France ­today, partners tend to f­avor ­simple cohabitation or a civil u ­ nion, both of which leave asset management to the individual. And even among married c­ ouples, community of assets is losing ground to separating assets in France.41 The default regime upon marriage is still partial community property, but signing a prenuptial agreement for the separation of assets allows each spouse to be the sole owner of assets purchased with money marked as their own. Some of ­these ­couples prob­ably see the individualization of wealth as ideal for eco­nom­ically in­de­pen­dent spouses. Given the increasingly probable event of marital breakdown, however, it is also a way to protect the richer spouse’s wealth. The separation of assets is frequently chosen (on the notaire’s advice) by c­ ouples where at least one of the spouses accumulates part of their wealth from self-­employment or is likely to inherit soon (­because, although inherited assets remain individually owned in theory, the separation of assets ensures that they cannot become community property for lack of being sufficiently marked as belonging to one of the spouses). ­Couples who choose to separate their assets are generally wealthier at the outset, and also more unequal, with an over-­representation of situations in which men are far wealthier than their wives.42 Now that the breakdown of cohabiting relationships is commonplace, the individualization of wealth functions as a protective mechanism for male wealth accumulation and the transfer of f­amily wealth along male lines. It thus also aggravates the economic situation of ­women when a domestic relationship breaks down. Like Sabrina Legendre, many w ­ omen who purchased property with their partner end up with “nothing” or only modest financial compensation. This in­equality stands out in the statistics: ­after separation, men are more likely than ­women to keep owner­ship of the home. In 2015, according to INSEE’s permanent demographic sample, 43 ­percent of separated men w ­ ere still living in the former conjugal home one year a­ fter separation, but only 32 ­percent of separated ­women (of the remaining percentage, both had moved out).43 The gap is larger for c­ ouples who had been homeowners: 46 ­percent of men stayed in the home, but only 30 ­percent of ­women did. Furthermore, ­after ­women left a jointly owned conjugal home, only 29 ­percent of them went on to own their next home, while 55 ­percent rented from a private landlord and the remaining 16 ­percent moved into public

66   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

housing. Men who leave the conjugal home are more likely to remain homeowners: 35  ­percent purchased another home.44 In the French Wealth Survey, 2014–2015, being separated rather than in a c­ ouple greatly reduced the likelihood of being a homeowner, all other t­ hings being equal (same age, socioprofessional category, number of siblings, and parental property owner­ship).45 This correlation is significantly higher for ­women than it is for men (see T ­ able 2.3). Despite changes in the l­abor market, the rise in breakdowns of committed intimate relationships and the trend ­toward wealth individualization have both served to keep ­women in a dominated position where wealth accumulation and transfer are concerned.

­Widows Giving Up Property At the end of the life cycle comes one type of in­equality that actually ­f avors ­women: longevity. The life expectancy gap f­ avors w ­ omen in most countries—­women in France live to an average age of 85.4 as opposed to 79.5 for men (life expectancy is 81.7 for ­women versus 76.6 for men in the United States, 84.7 versus 81.2 in Canada, 83.3 versus 80.2 in the United Kingdom, and 88.1 versus 81.9 in Japan).46 If a ­woman reaches 65 years of age in good health in France ­today, she can expect to live another 23 years, although only 11 of ­those years ­will be ­free of disability. A man who reaches the threshold of 65 can expect to live 19 more years, only 10 of which ­will be in good health.47 The longevity of ­women leads to a longer period of disability, as well as a longer period without a partner to care for them, all the more so b­ ecause of the average age gap among partners in different-­sex ­couples. All ­these ele­ments taken together explain that w ­ omen’s end-­of-­life experience is often very dif­fer­ent from men’s. In France, most men spend their final years at home with their wives, while most w ­ omen finish their lives as ­widows in a retirement home. In 2015, according to INSEE, 62 ­percent of ­women over 80 lived alone, while only 27 ­percent of men of the same age did. ­Widows had difficulty remaining homeowners, however. According to the French Wealth Survey, 2014–2015, the correlation between being widowed and primary residence owner­ship was negative for ­women—in other words, ­widows tended not to own their home. For men, being widowed had no significant statistical effect on homeownership.

­table 2.3. ​Regressions of the probability of men and ­women owning their primary residence Probability of owning their primary residence: ­Women

Men

Constant

Coefficient

Standard error

Coefficient

Standard error

1.4451***

0.0866

1.9027***

0.0887

−3.0271*** −1.2529*** −0.3259*** Ref. 0.3615*** 0.4681*** −0.1073***

0.2499 0.085 0.0783 Ref. 0.08 0.0809 0.011

−3.885*** −1.4433*** −0.4940*** Ref. 0.2891*** 0.5760*** −0.1048***

0.2816 0.0824 0.0783 Ref. 0.0783 0.0794 0.00973

0.6133*** 0.0650

0.1642 0.0969

−0.4797*** −0.6007***

0.1855 0.12

0.3184*** Ref. −0.6235*** −0.4734*** −0.9153***

0.0837 Ref. 0.0909 0.0689 0.1813

0.0830 Ref. −0.5119*** −0.5977*** −1.2238***

0.0954 Ref. 0.0679 0.0902 0.0952

−0.2895*** Ref. −0.1216 −0.0449

0.0554 Ref. 0.1471 0.0843

−0.5350*** Ref. −0.0284 −0.0525

0.0521 Ref. 0.1676 0.0816

−0.9281***

0.0943

−1.5252***

0.1049

−1.133*** −0.1489 Ref.

0.0775 0.1478 Ref.

−1.7741*** −0.5611*** Ref.

0.0716 0.0821 Ref.

Age ­ nder 25 years U 25 to 34 35 to 44 45 to 54 55 to 64 65 and over Sibling group size Socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, business head Cadre, higher intellectual profession Intermediary positions Basic employee Laborer Unknown Parents’ real estate owner­ship Own(ed) no real estate Only primary residence Only other housing Primary residence and other housing Marital trajectory Never been in a cohabitating relationship Living alone a­ fter separation Living alone a­ fter being widowed Living in a ­couple

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: N = 8,836 men, N = 9,836 w ­ omen; h ­ ouse­hold person of reference or spouse / partner. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: We used a logit model for binary data. A man / ­woman presenting a given characteristic w ­ ill have more / less likelihood of being owner of his / her primary residence than a man / ­woman presenting the characteristic of reference if the coefficient associated with this characteristic is positive / negative. Where the size of the sibling group is concerned, the sign of the coefficient indicates that an increase in sibling-­group size has an effect on the probability of a man / ­woman being owner of his / her primary residence. * = significance level of 10%; ** = significance level of 5%; *** = significance level of 1%. Coefficients in bold indicate that the difference between the estimated coefficients for men and for w ­ omen is greater than the sum of the standard errors for ­t hese coefficients. It is only in this last situation that we comment on the differences between the coefficients for men and ­women.

68   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

This asymmetry can be explained in part by the vast income in­ equality between retired men and ­women. In France, retired ­women over 65 receive a pension worth, on average, 39 ­percent less than men in similar situations, or 25 ­percent less when including surviving spouse benefits.48 The decrease in surviving spouse benefits, the rise of unmarried ­couples, the increase in separations, and per­sis­tent income in­equality between w ­ omen and men have only entrenched this gap.49 All this, combined with w ­ omen’s greater life expectancy and longer period of disability, explains why many w ­ omen have no choice but to abandon the ­family home and finish their lives in a retirement home. ­Women constitute close to 80 ­percent of all retirement home residents over 80 years of age in France ­today.50 In contrast to retirees who still live in their ­family home (70 ­percent of whom own that home), less than a third of retirement home residents still own a home.51 This little-­k nown figure was determined by sociologist Solène Billaud and is nowhere to be found in government statistics. This is ­because t­ hese statistics—­especially ­those from the French Wealth Survey—­are collected only at the ­house­hold level and overlook the asset situations of individuals who live in group settings such as nursing homes. Therefore, all official data underestimates how many ­widows must give up home owner­ship.

Patriarchy and the Transfer of ­Family Wealth Jeanne Le Vennec is 88 years old. She lives in a large, three-­story h ­ ouse on a hill overlooking a park on the outskirts of Quimper, in Brittany. She and her husband, Pierre, built the h ­ ouse in the 1960s. They both came from large farming families, and the h ­ ouse, built with their own hands, was their only asset. In 1997, two years a­ fter Pierre’s death, Jeanne started to openly won­der ­whether she should sell the h ­ ouse to purchase something smaller and easier to maintain. But one of her two sons was opposed to the idea: “Eric said to me ‘Certainly not,’ that I ­shouldn’t sell.” Eric’s ­sister Patricia described him as “taking up the baton of patriarch”: “­Because he’s a boy, and between the two boys, he’s the one with his head on straight [the younger ­brother, Marc, was diagnosed with schizo­phre­nia twenty years ­earlier]. He’s also the one who has ­children—­he’s got two boys. ­They’re the only ones who get the ­family name, can pass it on.” Eric’s ­father was a mason and dreamed of starting his own business, which Eric did for



Family Reproduction versus Women’s Wealth  69

him (as well as for himself) in founding a thriving construction com­pany that had twenty employees by the time of our study. Eric felt that his ­father had passed him the baton, and that he was now responsible for looking a­ fter his m ­ other and the ­family ­house. Jeanne told us how her husband had renovated the ­house so she could shoulder financial responsibility for it alone. ­Because Jeanne had worked intermittently as a home-­based child-­care provider and her husband had supplemented his pension with work u ­ nder the t­ able, they had long known that her fixed income as a ­widow, including surviving spouse benefits, would be far less than their income had been. Consequently, Pierre Le Vennec set up a rental apartment on the ground floor of the ­house, whose rent would cover utilities and maintenance expenses, and arranged a gift to survivor so that Jeanne would be able to continue living in the h ­ ouse without the ­children pushing her to sell. But this did not mean that she could do as she pleased with the h ­ ouse, as Pierre had set it up so Jeanne could stay in the ­house while also making sure that it would stay in the ­family. Eric ensured that his f­ather’s wishes ­were respected by forbidding his ­mother to sell the h ­ ouse and questioning his siblings’ motives. He explained in an interview, “­A fter Dad’s death, I was afraid t­ hey’d push Mom to sell. I thought, well, if Anne-­Marie, Dominique, Dany, Patricia, Valérie, or Marc needed money, I thought they might pressure her. And I was afraid ­because I thought ‘It’s ­going to be me against them.’ ” Eric knew that he was eco­nom­ically well off, whereas his siblings’ job situations ­were much less stable: his ­brother had a serious ­mental health condition, and his s­isters’ ­careers ­were secondary to their husbands’ jobs and their ­children’s needs. This instability could also be applied to their marriages: four of Eric’s five s­ isters w ­ ere divorced, two of them twice. A ­ fter mentioning his concern about the f­ uture of the ­house, Eric said his f­ ather had also built ­houses for his ­sisters and had worn himself out in the pro­ cess. The ­houses all had to be sold, some of them only months ­after having been built, ­because the divorcing ­sisters could not afford to pay back the loans for the land and construction materials on their own. “I thought that was hard on my ­father,” Eric concluded. Eric’s version of the Le Vennec ­family history erases the fact that w ­ omen helped build the f­amily properties. Jeanne explained that she helped her husband with their h ­ ouse during eve­n ings and weekends, and prepared mortar on weekdays alongside her ­house­hold responsibilities. Their

70   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

­ aughters likewise worked on their ­houses. But the fragile economic situd ation of the ­widow and ­these divorced ­women made them ineligible for making strategic decisions over the f­ uture of the ­family’s real estate assets. ­Women are potential f­ uture ­widows and divorcees. As such, many p ­ eople see them as unreliable for bearing and transferring ­family wealth. Though ­women now have easier access to the ­labor market and wages, this has done ­little to change their position in the accumulation and transfer of f­amily wealth. When w ­ omen transfer some of their personal assets to their c­ hildren, it is usually to their detriment. Even though ­women play a far from negligible role in ­family enrichment, they accumulate far less for themselves, and their wealth is more subject to the ups and downs of married life than that of their husbands. Parents consequently see their d ­ aughters as second-­ rate heirs. It comes full circle: less endowed by their families from the start, w ­ omen accumulate far less wealth and have more fragile rights over it. This in turn lends legitimacy to favoring their b­ rothers and further diminishes their hold on ­family assets. Taken together, ­family strategies of social reproduction are clearly unfavorable to w ­ omen. Th ­ ese strategies are not solely played out in the privacy of f­ amily arrangements, and they do not unfold in a ­legal vacuum. To the contrary, they often require the intervention of l­egal professionals. Next, in Chapter 3, we ­will go ­behind the closed doors of the offices of notaires and f­amily ­lawyers, in posh Pa­ri­sian neighborhoods and h ­ umble rural towns, to elucidate a mystery: How is it that, despite a formally egalitarian ­legal framework, ­family wealth arrangements usually enrich men and impoverish ­women?

3 Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak

T

he first time she set foot in the office of her l­awyer, Grâce Dupont-­Bernard, in February 2014, Ginette Durand was, as she put it herself, “anxious.” She had no desire to be t­ here, and only a string of unfortunate circumstances had forced her to come. The life of this slight and discreet 65-­year-­old w ­ oman had not been easy. She raised her ­children by herself, with a violent husband whom she also described as “insane,” “schizophrenic,” and a “psychopath” who “always sponged off ­others.” “I’d shut up and I’d endure it all,” she said. For nearly ten years she also looked a­ fter her disabled ­mother, who lived with her u ­ ntil the day she died. Ginette Durand’s financial situation was quite modest. She had been on welfare for almost ten years and now had a small pension of 342 euros a month, plus a supplementary minimum old-­age benefit that brought her monthly income to 700 euros. Revealing all that to the ­lawyer seemed to make her uncomfortable, even though it was an unassuming law office located in an industrial and commercial park near a supermarket. Ginette pulled up her chair, leaned across the t­ able, and spoke in such a low voice that the sociologists seated in the back of the room (Céline and Camille Phé) could barely hear the beginning of the conversation. If Ginette went to see a l­awyer, it was b­ ecause of her husband. He was ­under ­legal guardianship, and she ­hadn’t lived with him for ten years. A few months previously, he was transferred from his residential care fa­cil­i­t y 71

72   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

to a retirement home. The ­couple’s ­children had a bad surprise when they received letters asking them to pay the bill, to the tune of 1,500 euros a month. This was exactly how much their d ­ aughter, who lived with Ginette, earned working in a home décor shop. It was also the income of the older son, who was a mason and lived with his wife (a home-­based child-­care provider) and their two teenage children. In other words, even if they ­were to share the cost, they c­ ouldn’t imagine how they could pay a sum like that—­and given the nature of their relations with their ­father, they had no desire to do so. Her daughter-­in-­law’s reaction had been brusque, snapping at Ginette, “Do what you have to do to get him out of ­there!” Ginette felt that she had to see a l­awyer in order to protect her ­children. Over the twenty-­five minutes spent in the l­awyer’s office, Ginette’s extreme reserve faded and anger and incomprehension ­were also audible in her voice. She did not understand why her husband, who was only 61, was put in a retirement home and not a m ­ ental institution, where costs would be covered by the national health insurance. Nor did she understand why the c­ hildren ­were brought into it, when it had been years since they had any contact with their f­ ather. “We’ve suffered so much! My c­ hildren, they say, ‘We d ­ on’t have a f­ ather anymore, we d ­ on’t know him!’ My son has two ­children, and well, t­ hey’ve never seen him. B ­ ecause ­there’s a monster hiding in t­ here! When my ­daughter would cough at night, he’d give her a good thrashing to make her stop ­because it kept him from sleeping and irritated him.” As if to excuse herself, she acknowledged that “the prob­lem is that ­there is no proof, it all happened within the home.” In the law office, Ginette Durand learned the ins and outs of support obligations that worked at her expense. The ­lawyer informed her of the existence of articles 205–207 of the Civil Code imposing the provision of essential material aid for survival to a f­amily member in need. This obligation exists between spouses (when it is called spousal support), between parents and c­ hildren, and even between parents-­in-­law and sons / daughters-­ in-­law. Grâce Dupont-­Bernard explained what happened in Ginette’s husband’s case. In France the retirement home expenses of the poor may be offset by public assistance from the General Council of the relevant administrative department.1 However, when someone requests this assistance, the General Council first verifies that the individual does not have the means to pay, and then turns to t­ hose with support obligations to cover as much of the cost as pos­si­ble according to their respective resources.



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  73

Public assistance only comes into play ­after that, as a supplement. The professional guardian for Ginette’s husband went through ­these procedures on his behalf, unbeknownst to the f­ amily. The l­ awyer was reassuring concerning the son’s contribution b­ ecause he had a f­amily to provide for: “It w ­ ill be residual,” she told Ginette. However, she advised that her ­daughter move out as soon as pos­si­ble. “She has got to get her own apartment. If she stays with you, living expenses ­will be considered as shared, and she w ­ ill have to pay more than if she lives alone: it’s for the good of the cause!” Ginette Durand was crushed by this news, ­because her ­daughter helped her a ­great deal. She repeated that she ­didn’t understand why her d ­ aughter should pay for her f­ ather when he never took care of her. The discussion with the ­lawyer revealed another prob­lem: ­because she had not formally divorced him eleven years e­ arlier, at the time of their separation, in princi­ple Ginette herself also had support obligations to her husband. In other words, the retirement home was entitled to charge her for his care. The l­awyer questioned her client at length about a decision that clearly seemed irrational to someone who spent ­every day immersed in the law: Why ­didn’t she get a divorce? Ginette Durand replied that the situation with her husband was very difficult, that she was “afraid of him” and wanted to “take it slowly.” The ­lawyer warned her: she must file for divorce immediately. Ginette, discouraged at the prospect of this eco­nom­ically and emotionally costly undertaking, sighed and said, “I would have liked that to happen automatically.” The ­lawyer explained that that was not pos­si­ble, procedures had to be followed. She reassured her about the cost, since Ginette received ­legal aid that would cover her fees.2 Ginette conceded in a fatalistic tone, “Well anyway, if it has to be done, it has to be done.” She seemed relieved to have solid answers to her questions at the end of the meeting, when she told the ­lawyer, “Phew, I ­wasn’t even sure if I should come see you or not.” This was when she pulled a document from her purse, almost apologetically: “I sent this off to the retirement home in a rush, b­ ecause I ­didn’t want them asking my ­children.” It was a photocopy of a letter with a check for 5,000 euros, which was all of her savings, her inheritance from her m ­ other. The ­lawyer made an exclamation of surprise and put her head in her hands: “In that case, they know that you have 5,000 euros!,” she said, suggesting that t­ here was nothing to be done to save this meager fortune.

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­Legal Advice of Varying Quality Ginette Durand is a modest retiree pushed to the wall by the law. She lives with her ­daughter as she used to live with her ­mother, who left her a ­little nest egg. This informal economic arrangement is characteristic of working-­ class ­women3. It is formed outside of ­legal frameworks, at a safe distance from ­legal institutions and professionals, and is consequently susceptible to sudden challenges.4 Indeed, certain events can force relatives to make their practices conform to the l­egal definitions of f­amily economic relations: entering a retirement home, placement u ­ nder guardianship, marriage, death, or separation. As Florence Weber and Viviana Zelizer have stressed, practical kinship must then fit into the framework of l­egal kinship.5 ­People’s confrontations with the law can nonetheless take dif­fer­ent forms, depending on their social backgrounds, especially b­ ecause t­ here are considerable variations in the ser­vice l­egal professionals give them while making f­amily economic arrangements official. Some w ­ ill anticipate and make quiet arrangements in the shadow of the law, while o­ thers must endure the harsh questioning of the justice system and bureaucracies. ­There is nothing new about exposing the social inequalities pre­sent in encounters with the l­egal system; back in 1678 the poet Jean de la Fontaine wrote, “Depending on ­whether you are power­ful or poor, court rulings w ­ ill make you white or black.” 6 In this chapter, we w ­ ill connect ­these inequalities to t­ hose between men and ­women, ­because we have observed that when it comes to ­family assets, the power­ful are usually men, and the poor are usually w ­ omen. One of the achievements of American ­legal sociology in the 1990s was shifting the focus out of the courtroom and highlighting the ­legal awareness of ordinary p ­ eople who do (or d ­ on’t) use law in response to everyday 7 injustice. It overlooked, however, the importance of situating the social consciousness of p ­ eople subject to the law and the essential role of intermediaries in their ­legal socialization.8 It is precisely ­because of her ­limited economic resources and relative dearth of legitimate cultural capital that Ginette Durand did not see a ­lawyer sooner. This is why she d ­ idn’t fully understand the official situation of her f­ amily economic arrangements: she had poor knowledge of the law, avoided l­egal professionals, d ­ idn’t understand why her ­children ­were being asked for money, and had divulged that



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  75

she had a cash inheritance (­those 5,000 euros from her ­mother), which could easily have been kept hidden. In contrast, ­people who see l­awyers and notaires regularly get more than ­legal information from the encounter; ­legal professionals also offer them a private setting for putting their economic arrangements in line with the law, sheltered from the view of agents of the state. This closed-­door setting introduces significant leeway in the application of the law, but it is not accessible to every­one, and is even less accessible to ­women, given their relative poverty. A major share of social inequalities in situations involving ­family and property law arises from ­these relations with in­de­pen­dent ­legal professionals. For one ­thing, access to such professionals is socially unequal. Over one’s life span, one’s opportunities to meet a l­awyer or notaire vary considerably, depending on ­whether or not one possesses any assets, and the extent and composition of ­those assets. Then, even ­after setting foot in a law office, l­egal professionals do not treat all their clients the same way, depending on their social class and gender. Th ­ ese differences in treatment are the combined result of the segmentation of the asset management market and ­these professionals’ dif­fer­ent ways of treating their clients.

Unequal Opportunities to Meet with a ­Lawyer Having accumulated ­family capital provides many opportunities to meet specialists in ­family and property law, opportunities that Ginette Durand did not have ­because she owned no property and had never discussed her economic arrangements with anyone before her last-­minute appointment. For all manner of ­legal documents relating to the accumulation and circulation of assets between relatives, or even just to buy a home, a visit to the notaire’s office is a required step. The law defines a notaire as a “public officer appointed to receive legally binding documents and contracts to which the parties must or want to confer authenticity,” a position necessitating a specific three-­year gradu­ate degree.9 Along with this mono­poly over the writing of official documents comes the mission of collecting certain taxes, especially property transfer fees (a proportional tax owed by real estate buyers at the time of purchase, based on the value of the property) and the partitioning tax, paid by ex-­spouses upon the liquidation of their community property, proportional to the value of their assets.

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Notaires are legally mandated by the Ministry of Justice, and as such are agents of the state whose role is to serve the public. They are supposed to verify that the contracts for marriage, liquidation of marital property, and inheritance or inter vivos distributions that they prepare and register conform to civil and fiscal law. Compensation for each of ­t hese acts is set by law: some have set fees (for example, gifts between spouses are billed at 115 euros, plus taxes), but most are a percentage proportional to the value of the assets named in the deed or other ­legal document. Notaires may be agents of the Ministry of Justice, but they are hardly civil servants. For one ­thing, they can buy, sell, and transfer their practices. Being a notaire also permits them to have a commercial function as con­ sul­tants, for which they can set their own fees.10 Regardless of the type of ser­vice, they have a “duty to advise”: in princi­ple, notaires have to explain all pos­si­ble options to their clients, as well as the consequences of the documents that they ­will sign. Although notaires’ offices are the main site for implementing the law governing the circulation of ­family assets, ­lawyers also regularly get involved. Their mission is to defend their clients’ rights. Like notaires, ­lawyers are self-­employed and their work is heavi­ly regulated; the state entrusts l­awyers with a mono­poly of the defense of private individuals and businesses in the court. However, the professions of notaire and ­lawyer are both even more strictly controlled by their respective professional organ­ izations. ­Lawyers belong to the Order of L ­ awyers, which is broken down into a Bar for each administrative department, and notaires belong to department-­level Chambers headed by the High Council of Notaires.11 Unlike notaires, l­awyers set their own fees (except in the case of l­egal aid clients, whose cases are paid for according to a national rate). While notaires have the predominant role in successions, ­lawyers may still be involved to defend a client’s rights in a case, ­whether it goes to court or not. And inversely, l­awyers have the main role in conjugal separation cases, where notaires intervene only for one specific aspect of the case—­ liquidation of conjugal property—­which, as we w ­ ill see, is frequently tied to other issues (allocation of the ­family home, negotiation of a compensatory allowance), over which l­awyers have greater command. Notaires and ­lawyers examine the ­legal issues raised by ­family economic arrangements in a sale, succession, division of marital assets, or operation involving business capital. Depending on the composition of their personal



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  77

and f­ amily assets, dif­fer­ent members of the same f­ amily w ­ ill receive a more or less intensive socialization in the l­egal regulation of their economic arrangements. This ­legal training does not come from hours in lecture halls, but from regular contact with l­egal professionals. This socialization in ­family and property law is practically non­ex­is­tent in families that d ­ on’t own real estate, who are a significant minority: in France, over 40 ­percent of the population rents its housing. When f­ amily capital is low and l­imited to liquid assets, l­egal professionals are only slightly involved in f­amily economic arrangements, and may even be entirely absent at the time of inheritance. Indeed, inheritance distribution has to be registered with a notaire only when the inheritance consists of at least one piece of real estate or estate assets over 5,000 euros. We estimate that two out of five successions are not declared with a notaire, ­either ­because they are not taxable or b­ ecause they do not include real estate.12 Working-­class families without assets are thus at a remove from the law and the l­egal tools that might facilitate and formalize the circulation of economic resources among kin. This does not mean that t­ hese families d ­ on’t have to abide by the law, only that they have less help from professionals in d ­ oing so. Foresight and discretion are the prerogatives of families with assets, ­because they have the means to call on notaires and ­lawyers, and are in the habit of ­doing so. Other families are at a greater risk of seeing their ­family economic arrangements struck down u ­ nder the watchful eye of governmental administrations and the courts. For example, as we saw in Ginette Durand’s case, local public authorities can take ­family members to court to pay for the retirement home as part of their support obligations. The state, in the form of the national pension fund (Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse), can also require that minimum old-­age benefits paid to an el­ derly person be recovered from his or her estate ­after death. Litigation on such ­matters falls to the ­family court and the Tribunal Administratif (the district court before which one challenges administrative decisions).

When Notaires Protect the Husband’s Property Marriage is a good illustration of this social disparity in relations with family-­law professionals. In France, few c­ ouples meet with a l­egal professional at the time of marriage, and only a minority go see a notaire. According to the French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine), 2014–2015, out of the

78   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

2,092 ­couples who had been married fewer than ten years who responded to the questionnaire, 21 ­percent had signed a marriage contract with a notaire allowing them to adopt a marital regime other than the Civil Code’s default regime. Among ­these ­couples, the majority (15 ­percent of the total) opted for the separation of assets, which allows each spouse to keep property that was his or hers prior to or acquired during the marriage. The differences between social groups ­were quite significant. Contracts for the separation of assets w ­ ere signed in 27 ­percent of c­ ouples where the person of reference was a cadre or a knowledge worker, but only 4 ­percent of c­ ouples where he or she was a laborer (see T ­ able 3.1).13 Owner­ship of real estate in addition to primary residence (vacation home, rental properties) or movable financial assets (stocks, bonds) positively correlated with the likelihood of a ­c ouple opting for a contract specifying the separation of assets. The existence of professional assets was also a decisive f­actor: 48 ­percent of ­c ouples married for less than ten years in which the person of reference was in one of the professions, and 57 ­percent of ­couples where the ­person of reference owned a business with 10 or more employees, signed a contract for the separation of assets. Notaires play a decisive role in such disparities according to social group: they are the first to advise the separation of assets to a client who is self-­employed, the head of a business, or the administrator of a real estate com­pany. But the statistics also reveal the importance of ­family socialization: spouses whose parents are self-­employed have a significantly higher probability of choosing this kind of contract, regardless of ­whether they themselves are self-­employed. (See the logistic regression in Statistical Appendix F.) A marriage contract providing for the separation of assets and authenticated by a notaire thus proves to be an instrument for maintaining significant and diversified ­family capital within lineages located at the economic pole of the upper classes. Gender inequalities also emerge within ­these families, where men and ­women do not manage the same volumes or kinds of assets. Where professional assets are concerned, w ­ omen constitute only a third of shop o­ wners, 15 ­percent of tradespeople, and 13 ­percent of heads of businesses of ten or more employees, and the proportion of ­women at the head of a business declines the higher one goes in the business hierarchy.14 Men are also the

­table 3.1. ​Marital regime chosen at the time of marriage by ­couples married for less than ten years Initial marital regime Community of assets acquired Separa­after tion of Universal marriage property community Other All ­couples

82.2

15.0

1.7

1.1

45.3 69.2 35.3

54.2 29.0 56.5

0.0 1.3 2.0

0.5 0.5 6.2

72.0 50.6 87.0 88.3 92.2 64.5

26.9 48.0 9.6 8.8 3.6 33.0

0.9 1.1 2.0 1.3 2.7 1.5

0.2 0.3 1.4 1.6 1.5 1.0

79.8 64.8 66.1 71.2

17.6 31.1 30.9 26.7

1.8 3.1 2.3 1.4

0.8 1.0 0.7 0.7

76.5 74.8 84.0 91.4

20.8 23.3 12.3 6.0

1.3 1.3 2.3 1.7

1.4 0.6 1.4 0.9

The w ­ oman is older than the man The man is less than a year older than the w ­ oman The man is 2–3 years older than the ­woman The man is 4–6 years older than the ­woman The man is more than 6 years older than the w ­ oman

82.0 85.7 83.3 82.7 76.9

15.0 12.8 12.5 16.6 18.6

2.2 1.1 2.2 0.5 2.5

0.8 0.4 2.0 0.2 2.0

One member of the c­ ouple was previously married

74.4

22.3

2.3

1.0

Socioprofessional category of the person of reference Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, or business head . . . ​of which business heads of companies with ten or more employees Cadre or higher intellectual profession . . . ​of which in the professions or skilled self-­employed Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer ­Couples including one self-­employed person ­Couples that own . . . ​ their primary residence their secondary residence investment properties securities

Relative net worths of the man and the ­woman when they got together The man’s net worth was higher than the ­woman’s The w ­ oman’s net worth was higher than the man’s The man and the­woman had nearly equivalent net worths Neither had any assets Age difference between spouses

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: All different-­sex ­couples married for less than ten years, composed of the person of reference and his or her spouse. N = 2,092. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: “15 ­percent of married ­couples chose the “separation-of-property” marital regime at the time of marriage”; “26.9 ­percent of married ­couples where the person of reference is a cadre or higher intellectual profession chose the “separation-of-property” marital regime at the time of marriage. Among the c­ ouples where the person of reference works more specifically in the professions or as skilled self-­employed, 48 ­percent chose this marital regime.” For a pre ­sen­t a­t ion of the methodological choices b­ ehind the production of this ­t able, see Statistical Appendix F.

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ones to h ­ andle most real estate assets, especially t­ hose that are collectively owned. In France, “civil real estate com­pany” (société civile immobilière) is a specific ­legal status for joint real-­estate owner­ship (including among ­family members) intended to facilitate real-­estate transfer and management. In 80 ­percent of ­those companies, property management is delegated to one individual; and in 78 ­percent of ­those, that person is a man.15 As wealth increases and diversifies, the majority of ­those speaking with the l­egal professionals advising f­amily asset management are men.16 The practice of creating marriage contracts for the separation of assets is thus far from neutral where equality between men and w ­ omen is concerned. All other ­things being equal (especially the spouses’ occupations and the nature of the property held by the spouses and their parents), separation-­of-­property contracts are usually signed in situations where the spouses have imbalanced asset situations, especially at the time of marriage (which most often ­favors the man), or when the wife is younger. Signing a separation-­of-­property contract is thus a strategy to protect the wealthier spouse, who occupies a privileged position in her, or more often his, lineage.

A Well-­Advised CEO March 2010, in a courtroom in a major city: Over the course of eigh­teen months, “the biggest divorce case in the department” had been assigned to three ­family court judges, all ­women, as a sort of hot potato passed along to the most recent arrival.17 The case was between the CEO of a publicly traded insurance com­pany and his wife, who was director general of one of its subsidiaries. Their marital property was worth several million euros. The com­pany was founded by the husband in the late 1980s and remained exclusively his. They married in 2000 ­under the default matrimonial regime in France of the “partial community property,” wherein all purchases made by e­ ither or both following the marriage belong to both members of the c­ ouple. In 2004 the CEO and his wife invested 12.5 million euros in the com­pany. When they divorced in 2010, they disagreed on the origin of this increase in capital. He claimed that the investment was made partly with his personal capital, while she insisted that it was entirely made with capital from the community property. The stakes ­were high, b­ ecause the value of the com­pany had increased significantly between 2004 and 2010, skyrocketing from 32 million euros to 269 million.



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  81

For his divorce, the CEO called upon not only his personal l­awyer and his notaire, but also his com­pany’s l­egal counsel and accountant. In support of his case he submitted a thirty-­page paper by a professor emeritus who specialized in marital regime law (this is highly unusual), who provided a detailed ­legal analy­sis, obviously in the CEO’s ­favor. The wife had initially chosen a ­lawyer from Paris who was a big name in ­family law, and then fell back on a local l­awyer. She refused to allow her husband’s notaire to take care of the liquidation, and instead suggested two notaires in Paris who ­were “accustomed to working with g­ reat wealth.” Her husband promptly rejected her proposal, which forced the court to name a supposedly neutral expert: the president of the Chamber of Notaires in a bordering administrative department. He would in turn proceed to consult with another university professor, who specialized in private law, which led to a procedural incident involving conflict of interests: as the wife explained it, this professor was also a partner in the law firm that had crafted the c­ ouple’s ­legal arrangements for the capital increase in 2004, an arrangement whose initial aim had mainly been one of tax optimization. The husband fi­nally conceded that the consultation of the professor of private law should be withdrawn from discussion, and the president of the Chamber of Notaires was ordered to explain himself before a ­family court judge. Upon this occasion, he gave an estimate of 198,000 euros for his probable fees. He indicated that they ­were not his to determine as they ­were set by decree, in proportion to the value of the community property to be partitioned, which he estimated at 30 million euros. The judge also named a certified public accountant alongside the two other “experts”—­a real estate specialist (to assess all the ­couple’s h ­ ouses and apartments) and an auctioneer (to evaluate the furniture and art). The case file included the remunerations for all t­ hese specialists (30,880 euros for the accountant, 9,100 for the real estate specialist, 17,900 for the auctioneer) but not for the l­awyers. Ultimately, the only professional who was sure not to earn a penny more in her monthly paycheck for h ­ andling this moneyed divorce, despite its complex and time-­consuming singularity, was the judge ­handling the case. The richer the litigants, the greater their access to a broader and more diverse array of property law experts who are paid to grant them private time b­ ehind closed doors to arrange their assets in a personalized and sophisticated way. This can be for exceptional events like divorces or successions, or for everyday occasions like developing a fiscal strategy or discussing

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their com­pany’s business. In this case, the CEO’s familiarity with l­egal professionals (well predating his divorce) was so ­great, and the fees that he paid them so high, that their neutrality was questionable. The case exposes the issue of equal treatment of families and f­ amily members by l­egal professions. The mere mortal ­doesn’t have the means to pay experts to constantly protect their assets, and ­doesn’t necessarily see the point. Most divorce cases involve only one or two ­lawyers, plus a notaire should the ­couple own real estate. Even in the economic bourgeoisie, where families may have “their” notaire or accountant, wives and s­isters, at the time of a divorce or succession, are rarely in a position to challenge the role that has been assigned to them in negotiations over asset arrangements. In the CEO’s divorce file, the impartiality of ­legal experts was denounced only ­because his wife had very specific resources: with a degree from a prestigious school and her work in her husband’s com­pany, she had the resources and knowledge to point out irregularities. But such situations are relatively rare. As we have already mentioned, w ­ omen are commonly kept away from the management of ­family affairs and know l­ittle about them, b­ ecause asset arrangements are negotiated in the shadow of the law in ­legal professionals’ offices.

­Family Wealth Arrangements in the Shadow of the Law In 2010, only 5 ­percent of successions and 3 ­percent of liquidations of marital property ­were taken to court in France.18 This means that the vast majority of f­ amily asset distributions upon the occasion of a death or divorce happens elsewhere, out of sight, in the offices of ­legal professionals. Notaires are fond of presenting themselves as “asset doctors” and “guarantors of f­ amily peace.” L ­ awyers, too, can get recognition for their experience in “negotiated law,” and they consider their work to be a kind of mediation, promoting amicable ways of settling disputes. The intense media coverage of Johnny Hallyday’s succession was a fine opportunity to publicize this facet of their work. On April 13, 2018, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Nanterre issued an emergency order to freeze Johnny Hallyday’s assets in France, preventing them from being transferred to a trust in the United States that would have benefited only his last wife, Laeticia, and their d ­ aughters, and thus contradicted French inheritance law. Upon this occasion, the Pa­ri­sian notaire Nathalie Couzigou-­



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  83

Suhas granted an interview to the website of the public radio station France Info, in which she stated, “This is a very wise decision, ­because in practice it ­will force them to take a place at the negotiating t­able. In many cases, by listening and by explaining the law, we notaires can manage to find solutions so that p ­ eople ­don’t go to court. Perhaps mediation, reconciliation, or even—­why not?—­arbitration should be favored.”19 Having provided a ­little publicity for her profession in passing, the notaire concluded that given the power relations among the concerned parties, it would be in the interest of Laeticia Hallyday, Laura Smet, and David Hallyday to agree on the distribution of assets in the secrecy of a law office, with the flexibility this would allow, rather than continuing to face off in court and enduring all the uncertainty that comes with a very public ruling. This is exactly what happened a year l­ater, when Laeticia dropped her challenge of the French courts’ jurisdiction over Johnny’s estate. “I choose peace. It is with this desire that t­oday I instructed my counsel for all procedures to follow,” she posted in her public Instagram account on October 15, 2019. The press immediately translated this as “Laeticia is ready to negotiate,” stressing that she had a new l­egal team and that t­ here had been meetings between “counsels of each of the concerned parties in the case.”20 We define ­family wealth arrangements as the oftentimes laborious and / or conflictual consensus-­building pro­cess among f­amily members and l­egal professionals over the appraisal and distribution of f­amily wealth, as well as the outcome of this pro­cess. We use this term to designate situations with tensions that are not resolved by a unilateral imposition of one point of view (the law of the strongest) or by a harmonious accord arising from ­family relations where every­one seems to agree (one common point of view). Arrangements require multiple ­people (they cannot be made by one person) and several points of view that need to be reconciled. From a temporal perspective, arrangements are never completely finished: making arrangements is a perpetual pro­cess that outlasts their ­legal and moral formalization, whose results are only temporary. This concept goes beyond the ­legal opposition between agreement and contention, by providing a finer description of the social production of consensus, including when the latter is fragile and temporary. The closed doors of the notaire’s or ­lawyer’s office are what make it pos­si­ble for clients and their counsel to come to arrangements “in the shadow of the law.” This expression was used by two American law

84   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

professors who showed the influence of case law on divorces, even undisputed ones, that ­were negotiated between l­awyers. In their study, the prospect of g­ oing to court, which the spouses ­were trying by all means to avoid through negotiation, strongly l­imited the demands of both parties.21 ­Here we adapt and expand this notion to highlight the extent to which the ­family wealth arrangements formalized by ­lawyers and notaires at the time of divorce or succession are based in the law and meet its requirements, but also make it pos­si­ble to work around or even evade the spirit of the law. Ginette Durand’s wealth arrangements w ­ ere not made in the shadow of the law, or at least not ­until she set foot in the law office. On the contrary, they ­were made in ignorance of the law and then dangerously exposed to public authorities. In the propertied m ­ iddle and upper classes, where assets are an impor­tant component of f­amily strategies of social reproduction, wealth arrangements negotiated in the privacy of ­legal professionals’ offices run ­little risk of being challenged like this. The coherence of ­family strategies of social reproduction protect against the possibility of ­t hese ­matters being discussed in court. Let’s return to the Pilon f­ amily in Chapter 2 as an example. We saw how the ­sisters of the son who took over the ­family bakery had been socialized “to not count,” acquired a social status that was difficult to dissociate from that of their ­brother, and learned to fear ­family discord. They could have legally challenged the distribution, but had ­little interest in compromising it, and ­little likelihood of succeeding anyway. To take another example, we saw that property owner­ship meant a major investment for Sabrina Legendre and her former husband, one that mattered so much to her that she pursued ­these plans and adapted her c­ areer in order to “leave something” to her ­children, regardless of the tension in their relationship. However, she ended up giving up her share of this asset. Sabrina Legendre knew that the notaire who liquidated their marital property did her no ­favors in the accounting provided at the time of the divorce, much like her in-­laws’ notaire, who had overseen the purchase of the ­house and advised her husband to mark her smaller share. But, as she confessed, she had neither the means nor the desire to challenge t­ hese f­ amily wealth arrangements. The greater and more diversified the assets, the more work it is to develop ­family wealth arrangements that conform to both the law and the interests of the ­family. This work is subject to tensions and engages power relations between spouses and heirs alike. When the stakes are significant



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  85

and disagreement over f­amily strategies of social reproduction are high enough, the court can become a conceivable prospect for resolving disagreement over ­family wealth arrangements, as was the case with the “well-­ advised CEO.” The wealthiest families can cycle endlessly between public litigation procedures in court and the hushed privacy of ­legal offices. ­Because of the concentration of wealth in Paris, the Paris Court of Appeals’ f­ amily court has a disproportionate number of these kinds of exceptional cases. One day Brigitte Cigliano, a judge at the Paris Court of Appeals, showed one of us (Céline) a file for a divorce case that was a meter and a half (five feet) thick. It was composed of ten or so thick b­ inders piled in a corner of her office, what she described as “the main act of the show.” The case should have been pled in the after­noon session, but the ­lawyers had requested a postponement. Another judge, who was also in the room with us, interjected, “­These must be wealthy ­people!” Brigitte Cigliano confirmed that the case was between the third-­highest executive of the Spanish subsidiary of a multinational corporation and a fashion model. Céline asked the judge if she had started to look at the case yet: “Oh no, certainly not! I have no desire to open it!” she replied. Not only would the extremely thick case file take her two weeks of work, but she knew that the conflict would prob­ably end in a negotiation between the parties, meaning that it would no longer go to court. It is reasonable to expect that the case of the “well-­advised CEO” took the same turn. Very wealthy families thus have the means to both take their conflicts over assets to court and ultimately ­settle them in the privacy offered by ­legal professionals, as their privileged clients.

“Good Clients” Resemble Their Notaire From the notaire’s perspective, some clients are worth more than o­ thers. ­Handling an insolvent estate means working for heirs who ­will likely have ­little opportunity to return to the office, or who w ­ ill come back only to buy a home of l­ittle value, and thus not very profitable. It is far more fruitful to advise clients with major assets, who are likely to make ­simple gifts to grandchildren, inter vivos distributions to their ­children, charitable donations, or multiple real estate acquisitions and sales, all acts that are billed proportionally to the value of the assets in circulation.

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Sébastien Darguy is a 35-­year-­old notaire with a practice he shares with a partner (his wife) in a small town with a strong laboring history in southwestern France. Most of their clients are small property ­owners: “We sell the ­house nearby for 150,000 euros, the apartment at 80,000 or 60,000 euros, you see, land for 70,000 euros—­that’s our bread and butter!” In ­these conditions, Sébastien Darguy explains regretfully, ­there is no time to consider the systematic use of complex ­legal tools: “For it to work ­here, ­you’ve got to crank through it, it has to go fast. An office like this one is 80 ­percent ­free advice. . . . ​We see a client for half an hour and they move on. I have more than ten appointments a day. I confess, sometimes I yell at my colleagues for working like Pa­ri­sian notaires—­they are too meticulous, they spend too much time on cases that ­aren’t worth it, they double-­check every­ thing. A l­ittle case has to go quickly! So my colleagues, sometimes I have to tell them to stop.” Use of the more sophisticated tools of f­amily law is impeded not only by the insufficient assets in each case but also by the need to work with a large number of clients, leading to a certain routinization of practice in order to make money. Sébastien Darguy nonetheless devotes par­tic­u­lar effort to building up a selected clientele more in line with the practice to which he aspires, despite considering his location to be unfavorable. He strives to maintain the social capital he accumulated in his hometown forty kilo­meters away, a capital largely accrued among medical professionals b­ ecause his parents w ­ ere pharmacists, and his in-­laws, doctors. He makes the trip several times a week to attract this wealthier clientele to his office. He also relies more broadly on the masculine in-­group sociability that is typical of the local bourgeoisie. “You work, you go out e­ very night to meet p ­ eople, so, p ­ eople who bring you clients. . . . ​You make yourself fifteen pals who keep you working; in a town like this, it goes fast,” he told us. Dinners in the city, training sessions at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, rugby matches on Saturday, membership in a ser­vice club (­Table Ronde Française, for men ­under 40, mostly businessmen or in the professions)—­a ll ­these activities help him build up a wealthier clientele, which allows him to increase his revenue and take more of the market share from competing notarial offices. Notaires aspire to develop a select client base whose economic capital ­will make their office a success. Of course, Sébastien Darguy’s clientele from



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the professions is worlds away from the clients favored by the other notaires we have met, like the extremely wealthy Pa­ri­sians advised by Jean-­Pierre Chartrain, or the farming clientele Cédric Le Guen is so fond of advising in his rural office (“straight-up p ­ eople who are easy to work with”). Th ­ ese selected clienteles all have one ­thing in common, however, and that is the centrality of economic capital to their work, leading them to make regular visits to the notaire’s office. “The beautiful notarial profession, I dare say! And that is truly agreeable, b­ ecause we have faithful clients, we know their histories, we grow old together,” sums up Jérôme Poly, a 40-­year-­old notaire who works in a semi-­rural area of the Pays de la Loire, in western France. The social proximity between t­ hese notaires and t­ hese “good clients” is remarkable: they are all ­people with property who share a common interest in the preservation of wealth over time and its transfer in the ­family. The profession of notaire is still an “inheritance-­based profession.”22 Notarial practices are indeed rare (the number and location are regulated by the state) and costly to acquire, r­ unning 400,000 to 1 million euros depending on the location and its annual turnover.23 In 1987, fifteen years ­after the establishment of a specific degree for notaires (one more year of study ­after a two-­year master’s degree), Ezra Suleiman estimated that one-­third of all notarial offices in France w ­ ere still passed from f­ ather to son.24 This practice has become less common since, but persists to this day. Once notaires have their degree, they start to practice as interns and then as employees in an office. To become a full-­fledged partner, t­ hose not inheriting a ­family office have to be taken ­under the wing of another notaire who owns a share in an office. They must then have the means to buy a partner’s share, in many cases using their own assets or taking out a loan. Thirteen male and four female notaires agreed to in-­depth interviews with us. They w ­ ere aged 30 to over 60, practiced in offices small or large, alone or with up to six partners, in a variety of geo­graph­i­cal areas. We have detailed knowledge of the social backgrounds of fifteen of them. Half of ­those had taken over the office of a f­ amily member: six inherited it directly from their f­ather or grand­father, one took over from his father-­in-­law, and another was the son of a notaire but had joined another practice instead of taking over his ­father’s. With only one exception, all came from families of self-­employed or business-­owning parents (parents or in-­laws who ­were doctors, pharmacists, restaurant and ­hotel keepers, bakers,

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farmers, wine-­grape growers, appraisers) and set up practice in their home region. ­Those with c­ hildren nearing the end of their education generally wondered about passing their practice on. It is striking to see how much notaires want to create a strong, long-­term relationship with certain families, especially t­ hose with the most economic capital, that is built on trust and fosters a strong identification as “the ­family notaire.” Take, for example, the words of Marc Pouget, a 30-­year-­old notaire who took over his ­father’s practice in southwestern France. He gives us his view of what constitutes a successful succession: “Even if I have a ­family disagreement, I can institute one of my ­children as sole legatee in my ­will, if I have a prob­lem with another, it’s not a big deal. At least the one to whom I left every­thing, h ­ e’ll take possession of the inheritance, and then, it’s a ­matter of evaluating the assets, so, an economic negotiation. . . . ​It’s good ­family management, when I manage to pass along all of my assets, and end up with life insurance, which ­isn’t taxable, and just enough to write the inheritance declaration left in the accounts, well in that case, the parents . . . ​it means they managed the t­ hing ­really well!” The w ­ hole interview is like this, in the first person. When Marc Pouget says “I,” he is sometimes explic­itly designating himself as a notaire, but it is also a way for him to talk about a case while putting himself in the place of his client. When he celebrates parents who managed their estate well by planning ahead, he is also celebrating how good he is at his job. His professional interests are thus directly connected to his clients’ interests, in a long-­term relationship where foresight, trust, and common interest go hand in hand. It is in a notaire’s best interest to not fritter away their client’s fortune—­in their best financial interest, since their fees are calculated as a percentage of ­those assets. The “­family notaire’s” point of view is bound to the client’s, and vice versa. This tallies with a finding from a pioneering study by the American anthropologist George Marcus, who studied how the ­great American dynasties have entrusted experts (trust man­a g­ers, estate planners, l­awyers, accountants, and even psychologists) with the management of their ­family fortunes since the late twentieth ­century. Marcus showed that, paradoxically, ­these professionals outside the ­family ­were the ones most attached to the perpetuation of ­family fortunes over time.25 The wealth man­ag­ers’ professional ethos made them even more conservative and familialist than their clients. The same is true for notaires in France: they have an incentive to maintain assets over the long term in order



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to keep their clientele over the generations, in a ­family line that they usually imagine as being male. Our interviews with notaires showed how much ­these ­legal professionals identify with their clients as men. When notaires who are full partners spoke to us of cases, they never used feminine kinship terms. In French ­there are separate male and female terms for client, heir, surviving spouse, and child, but notaires unfailingly used the male version by default. We had to repeatedly ask if a given case concerned a ­widow or widower, a ­brother or a s­ ister, and often strug­gled to follow ­these f­ amily histories, told in ­legal terms and exclusively in the masculine. For t­ hese l­egal experts, l­egal language in the strictly masculine is not sexist; to the contrary, it guarantees gender neutrality. However, the economic morality of notaires is indeed based in a gendered vision of ­family relations, close to that of their favored clientele. Like their male and female clients, male and female notaires alike tend to think that men are better at cultivating ­family assets (especially professional assets) for the lineage—­exactly as it is in their own professional group, which ­favors men for heading notarial offices. Among the ­legal professions ­handling ­family law, the profession of notaire has the fewest w ­ omen. Of course, the High Council of Notaires highlights the rapid rise in the number of ­women: according to the official website of the profession, 47  ­percent of notaires w ­ ere w ­ omen in 2019, whereas only 22 ­percent of them w ­ ere w ­ omen in 2007. On January 1, 2016, though, 64 ­percent of notaires working as employees w ­ ere ­women (paid 2,000–4,000 euros a month; this percentage of female employees is still rising sharply), but ­women constituted only 32 ­percent of notaires with owner­ship in their own practice (a status earning an average of 17,000 euros a month, the total number being ­limited by a numerus clausus).26 Notarial work is divided by status in an office. Employee notaires are mostly responsible for documentation, preparation, and writing of ­legal documents. The notaires with owner­ship in the practice are the ones in direct contact with the clientele, and who define the strategy to be taken, especially when it concerns the regular, favored clientele with considerable economic capital. ­These notaires are socially the closest to families with high economic capital: not only is their pay relatively high, but they are at the head of substantial professional assets. The proportion of ­women achieving owner­ship of a notarial practice is starkly out of line with the proportion of notarial degrees that are earned

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by w ­ omen, which hovers around 70 ­percent in recent classes.27 The number of notarial practices is tightly ­limited by the state, although the 2016 “Macron Law” for growth, activity, and the equality of chances led to the creation of a significant number of new ones. In the subsequent 2016–2018 period, w ­ omen constituted 58 ­percent of the notaires named to head t­ hese newly created practices, which ­were attributed by a ­simple lottery of previously filed candidacies. However, ­women ­were only 45 ­percent of new notaires who took the usual path to practice owner­ship, “the right of pre­sen­ ta­tion,” meaning cooptation through succession or partnership in a preexisting practice.28 A Competition Authority Notice of July 31, 2018, thus noted: “While many contributors indicate that the heavy proportion of ­women in wage-­earning notarial positions was due to personal choice and that they did not wish to assume the responsibilities involved in in­de­ pen­dent practice, the number of female notaires named to the newly created offices, which—­given how the lottery worked—­should be roughly equivalent to the percentage of candidates, indicates, to the contrary, a certain appetite among the latter for entrepreneurship.”29 In short, the strategies of reproduction of this inheritance-­based profession are rooted in the same sexist mechanisms as their wealthy clientele’s, and it is manifest in the discrimination against w ­ omen who might want to achieve owner­ship in a notarial practice through cooptation.30

The Differential Treatment of Clients in L ­ awyers’ Offices The combination we observed in notaires—an active search for a favored clientele paired with dif­fer­ent ­legal practices according to clients’ social characteristics—is also found in ­lawyers. Overall, ­family law seems to be a dominated domain within the profession, ­little specialized and poorly paid.31 A heavy proportion of all ­lawyers have to ­handle ­family cases, at least periodically. It is also one of the domains where the feminization of the Bar is most vis­i­ble.32 In contested divorces, two-­thirds of men and three-­quarters of ­women are represented by a female ­lawyer when the nonconciliation order is issued.33 ­Lawyers work with dif­fer­ent kinds of clients, depending on the location and history of their practice, its size, how specialized it is, and above all the l­awyers’ professional and personal networks. At first glance, observations of ­lawyers in western France reveal a little-­ segmented market. L ­ awyers practicing f­ amily law see each other frequently



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at court or the Bar’s offices, and work with roughly the same clientele. As Yves Le Floch, a ­lawyer with over thirty years’ experience, explained it, “We ­aren’t in Paris, h ­ ere. In Paris you can be selective b­ ecause ­there are enough ­people in Paris, in Paris you have the clientele and the litigation. In the provinces we ­can’t, in Bars like ours, we ­can’t, it’s not pos­si­ble. You c­ an’t be selective and spend your time sending clients to the competition.” The ­lawyers we met thus practice in part with ­legal aid, although to varying degrees. L ­ egal aid fees are a set rate rather than by the hour. An uncontested divorce with one ­lawyer for both parties is billed at 1,400 to 2,100 euros; the base rate for a contested divorce is between 2,000 and 2,500, although it can run higher if proceedings are drawn out. We w ­ ere quickly struck by something we observed in law offices of the region: well-­off clients w ­ ere accorded more time and attention, on average, than clients from the working classes. The research team recorded the duration of the 45 consultations between ­lawyers and clients that it observed. Of the 40 meetings where the occupation of the client was known, t­ hose involving the working classes (N  =  16) lasted an average of 41 minutes, compared to ­those of the ­middle classes (N = 11) at 55 minutes and the upper classes (N = 13) at 61 minutes.34 Let’s go back to our observations in the office of Grâce Dupont-­Bernard, where she counseled Ginette Durand. Just ­after this meeting, which lasted 25 minutes, the ­lawyer saw a retired ­woman with a monthly pension of 600 euros who wanted to formalize her separation from her husband (effective for three years) in order to file a request for public housing. Grâce Dupont-­Bernard granted her only 15 minutes. The next client, a w ­ oman pushing 60, was a university professor in the pro­cess of divorcing her husband, an architect. Unlike the ­women preceding her, she appeared to be comfortable in the ­lawyer’s office. She was notably the only one who came over straightaway to shake our hands, confirming that she would proceed as if we ­weren’t pre­sent. This meeting lasted 45 minutes, and it began by listening to a voice message from the husband. Was this short message upon the occasion of the birth of a grand­son “perverse,” “odious,” “over-­prepared and closed,” as the client asserted? The l­awyer replied in the same psychological register: “Your husband is incapable of deeply probing his feelings.” Impressions and feelings took up a large part of their discussion, alongside discussion of the case’s l­egal and economic issues: the value of the ­house and assembling ele­ments for a request for a compensatory allowance. “You saw the complicity I have with her,” the ­lawyer remarked with satisfaction

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a­ fter the meeting. The last client that day came for the first consultation for a divorce. The ­lawyer spent an hour with him, an executive in the private sector who earned a comfortable salary of nearly 4,000 euros a month (and refused the presence of sociologists).35 Afterward she explained that she considered this a normal duration for a first meeting—­even though the first two clients that after­noon had also been t­ here for the first time. We could give many other similar examples. L ­ egal professionals often explain ­these variations by saying that the scale and complexity of the assets of the wealthier classes require longer consultations. Our observations lead us to nuance this assessment. Wealthy families undeniably have more-­complex assets, largely as the result of an intentional production of complexity by ­legal professionals themselves: tax specialists, notaires, accountants, bankers, wealth man­a g­ers, and so on, who intervene in numbers that rise with the wealth.36 But the financial affairs of working-­class p ­ eople seeking l­egal help can also prove to be just as complex. This is especially so for t­ hose with assets, who own real estate or professional property (sometimes appreciable), but who have low educational attainments and low incomes. Such a situation is common in rural areas.37 ­These clients may make ­lawyers wary. First off, ­there is no complicity based in common cultural references. Next, ­there is uncertainty about the client’s ability to pay. Part of the interaction between ­lawyer and client is to mea­sure the quality of information transmitted, which allows l­ awyers to judge the complexity of the case, effectively advise their clients, and thus do their job well. Trust between l­awyer and client is built over the course of ­these interactions. It is also a way for the l­awyer to gauge the client’s goodwill and ability to pay ­legal fees.38 But the paradoxical economic situation that is characteristic of the propertied working classes—no available liquidity but some assets, without knowing exactly how much—­engenders uncertainty over the complexity of the case, eligibility for ­legal aid, and the payment of ­legal fees more generally. We attended an appointment of the seasoned ­lawyer Michèle Abitbol, a specialist in ­family affairs aged around 60, with a client of this kind. Nathalie Mougins was 50 or so and co-­owned a pizza truck with her husband. Her husband’s ­lawyer had just summoned her to court in view of divorce. Over the course of the long first meeting (an hour and a half) the ­lawyer discovered that this potential client had no income (she lived off welfare) but that she and her husband possessed some assets—­a ­house in



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Brittany that they rented out for 540 euros a month, a fishing pond, a bungalow on an oceanfront property rented out for 300 euros a month, and several vehicles (a 4×4, two campers, and a small utility truck). The client presented herself as impoverished, but Michèle Abitbol explained to her that, given ­these assets, she would prob­ably not have the right to ­legal aid. She then indicated her rates (2,000 euros plus tax for the divorce) and asked her to take her time to think about w ­ hether she wanted to continue working with her. She immediately asked her secretary to bring her the bill for 120 euros for this first consultation, an uncommon ­thing to do ­because ­lawyers usually bill at a fixed rate or in blocks of time. Nathalie Mougins apologized, “Well, I ­didn’t bring anything, I ­don’t have a checkbook. I’ll send my ­daughter, s­ he’ll pay you.” The next day the ­lawyer announced to us that she had de­cided to not take this client b­ ecause “it’s ­going to go into a tailspin with her.” She feared she w ­ ouldn’t get paid if Nathalie Mougins d ­ idn’t get l­egal aid, but also thought that the remuneration from ­legal aid would be inadequate, given how much work would be required for such a complicated case.39 ­Lawyers regularly stress how they work “at a loss” on ­legal aid cases, leading them to limit their investment in cases like this. Accordingly, the average appointment length observed in law offices of this region was only 31 minutes for clients receiving ­legal aid but 59 minutes for other clients. Nathalie Mougins has all the traits of a “bad client,” due to intrinsic class and gender specificities. Her husband is in direct contact with the notaire who manages their properties and is also the one who initiated the divorce and chose a ­lawyer recommended by this notaire, whereas Nathalie Mougins has no l­egal network to turn to. The fact that she owns property casts doubt on her eligibility to ­legal aid, but with no income of her own she is in a tricky situation for paying a l­awyer. B ­ ecause she left the ­house due to conjugal vio­lence, she no longer has effective access to her property or to ­simple documents of proof. The ­lawyer, who is very experienced and practices in a predominantly rural area, is used to this kind of difficulty with clients from the working-­class fractions of the propertied classes, who ­don’t declare all their income, are not always solvent, but are not always eligible for ­legal aid e­ ither. She learned to identify them quickly, and she has the economic means to turn down cases like this when she can foresee the challenges of working without any certainty of being (well) paid.

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Proximity between l­awyer and client comes from more than just money, however. On the one hand, ­t here are the upper propertied classes that accumulate all forms of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) and manage to create a complicit relationship with their l­awyer so as to better defend their f­ amily and economic interests.40 Demonstrating ease in their interactions and familiarity with l­egal language (though not always using it accurately), upper-­class clients manage to take in their ­lawyers, asserting their perspective more often and intervening more actively in how their procedures move forward. Even though the l­awyer / client relationship is an asymmetrical one between an expert and a layperson, some ­lawyers—­especially early in their ­careers—­may have difficulty imposing their ­legal strategy on older executives who are accustomed to directing subalterns. On the other hand, ­there are the nonpropertied working classes, characterized by their subordinate employment position, tight economic resources, and relative distance from legitimate cultural capital.41 Intimidated by the law and its prac­ti­tion­ers, to whom they bring unprofitable cases, they have no choice but to follow their ­lawyer’s strategy without always understanding its implications. Between the two are a variety of positions, including nonpropertied classes with cultural capital who may be deeply invested in their case (writing their own conclusions rather than leaving it to the l­awyer, for example) even when the economic stakes are relatively low, or the propertied working classes whose eco­nom­ ically complex but unprofitable cases may make ­lawyers standoffish.

A Class-­Based Market in Greater Paris The family-­law market is even more segmented in and around Paris. At the bottom of the ladder, with re­spect to their remunerations and the wealth of their clients, are the ju­nior l­awyers on the ­legal aid list. They cycle through stints providing ­free l­egal advice in municipal buildings or l­egal outreach centers, working on a set fee and taking a heavy caseload to earn a living. Their clientele mainly consists of nonpropertied working-­class p ­ eople. It is in this segment of the ­legal market that we met a few l­awyers of North African, Portuguese, and sub-­Saharan African descent, many of whose clients had the same origins. Most of their income came from l­egal aid, a situation one of them referred to as “practicing mass L.A.” (­legal aid).



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But t­ here is such concentration of wealth in the Paris region, that the family-­law market is also segmented from above, with expensive firms specialized in estate management and consequently reserved for an elite clientele. In the posh neighborhoods of Paris and its cossetted suburbs t­ here are large firms entirely specialized in f­ amily and estate law, which they vaunt on their websites. One of them offers menu options including “law of ­family assets and other rights,” “international ­family law,” “marriage contracts and prenuptial agreements,” “estates and succession,” and “inheritance anticipation and liquidation.” Another website, entirely in En­glish, caters to an international expat clientele with the heading “international f­ amily l­awyers for a new generation of families,” and offers counsel in five languages. ­These firms’ rates are high, from 250 to 550 euros an hour, and their l­awyers do not take l­egal aid clients. ­There are not many of ­these specialized firms: “a dozen of them are prominent,” according to Cécile Martin-­Dubois, a ­lawyer in her forties who counts herself among them. Her office is huge, located in an imposing nineteenth-­century Haussmann-­style building in the nice part of the city. Clients come by word of mouth, sent by business-­law firms like the one where her husband works or ­a fter hearing about it from friends or friends of friends at dinners or in urbane social circles. Cécile Martin-­ Dubois offers her clients personalized ser­vice and makes herself very available to them. She sees all clients herself, systematically gives them her cellphone number, ensures all discussions with the other party (by phone or in person), and regularly accompanies her clients to meetings with their notaire or mediator. While other ­lawyers we met over the course of our research established a number of self-­protection tactics against a clientele that can be potentially invasive when troubled by ­family prob­lems (by limiting the number of appointments, putting calls through a switchboard, pressing clients to communicate by email), Cécile Martin-­Dubois seems very accessible and available to her cherry-­picked clientele. As she described it, “A French man married to a Greek w ­ oman, primary ­family residence New York, and current domicile Beijing—­that’s the type of case I h ­ andle.” She acknowledges that “­little cases” where every­one agrees from the outset ­don’t come to her. Less complicated cases from an equally wealthy clientele are very likely to be handled by firms that are not specialized in ­family law. They are

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reserved for a select clientele due to their high rates (averaging 300 euros an hour plus taxes) and their professional networks. Trained in tax and business law, Carole Jouve primarily practices ­family law for business ­owners sent to her by friends who are certified accountants or by her husband, who is a business l­awyer. She observes that her clients are mostly men: “It just so happens that ­people who do business are mostly men.” “It’s in my best interest to do a good job, ­because the reputation spreads fast afterward,” she explained. Men with substantial assets, especially ­those owning their own business, benefit from a preexisting network of ­legal professionals who know each other, and this system of recommendation affects the quality of the ser­vices they receive. Such upscale specialization is also found among the notaires of greater Paris. Located in a ­grand residence in a posh neighborhood of Paris, Jean-­ Pierre Chartrain’s notarial office focuses on a privileged clientele. In his fifties, this “scion of a very old f­ amily of notaires” (as a colleague put it) is one of four partners in a firm with twenty-­six employees, part of a network possessed by a holding com­pany that has two other offices in exclusive suburbs west of the city. In his office, three-­quarters of the successions are subject to the Solidarity Wealth Tax, being over the threshold of 1.3 million euros. Very elegant in a navy-­blue blazer, Jean-­Pierre Chartrain welcomed one of us (Céline) into the vast conference room where he receives his clients. The setting was old (molding, fireplace, parquet floor all intact), the equipment high-­tech (screens on the walls connected to a computer hidden ­under the ­table), the decor con­temporary (abstract art hanging on the walls), the furniture luxurious (leather seats, t­ able in a fine wood), and the coffee was served in fine china. Except for the screens on the wall and the telephone, the office evoked a bourgeois dining room more than a workplace—no trace of files in the room, and the discussion took place over coffee—­but the secretary was constantly available on the other end of the line to respond to any request the ­lawyer made of her. This interview was an opportunity to gauge how specific the ser­vices offered in this kind of office may be. ­Here, each client speaks with the same notaire at all appointments, but the essentials of the case may be handled by another notaire in one of the three networked offices, depending on the type of counsel or documents requested (new real estate, old real estate, ­family law, business transfer, international successions, and so forth). This highly precise and personalized ser­vice, reserved for a ­limited number of clients



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(the office registers only sixty successions per year), allows them to use the latest and most sophisticated tools in ­family law.

Dif­fer­ent ­Legal Tools, Depending on Economic and Cultural Capital Family-­law specialists offer only certain l­egal tools to clients with wealth of a certain level and composition. For example, notaires offer “marriage contracts for the separation of assets” to their business-­owning clients, in order to protect the wife from the vagaries of the husband’s professional activities and in practice also to protect the professional assets from the vagaries of conjugal life.42 The “limitation of gift” mea­sure (cantonnement des libéralités: allowing surviving spouses to reduce their share of an estate, generally to the benefit of the ­children) is offered only to w ­ idows who own their own home and have a large enough pension or income to cover their needs. “Intergenerational giving” (donations transgénérationnelles: wherein the child of a living donor renounces part of his or her reserved share of an estate in f­ avor of his or her own c­ hildren, to pay less inheritance tax) is offered to well-­off heirs who do not need their inheritance and would like their ­children to receive tax-­free gifts instead. The mea­sure called “anticipated relinquishing of share in reduction” (renonciation anticipée à l’action en réduction, known as RAAR) allows heirs to relinquish demands that donations benefiting another heir be taken into account in final estate settlements; in practice, this tool is reserved for the wealthiest clients, who, for example, may wish to make a donation to a charitable organ­ization. While Jean-­Pierre Chartrain sees this ­whole family-­law toolkit as part of the “tailored” ser­vice he offers in the “fiscal accompaniment” of his upscale Pa­ri­ sian clientele, ­these ­legal tools are absent from the practices of nearly half the notarial offices of France.43 Cédric Le Guen, notaire in a poor rural area, has used the RAAR only twice since it was instituted in 2006, had no “intergenerational inter vivos gifts” the previous year, and has never done a “limitation of gift”; as he put it, “You need the material for that!” Other l­egal tools are not solely the mono­poly of economic elites. They are intended for the lower fractions of the propertied classes. We w ­ ill give two examples. The “gift to the survivor” (donation au dernier vivant) used to be a common l­egal mea­sure in France and use was widespread in the latter half

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of the twentieth ­century. ­Until the Law of 3 December 2001 Relative to the Rights of the Surviving Spouse, ­widows and widowers only enjoyed use without owner­ship of one-­quarter of their deceased spouse’s estate; ­legal professionals referred to it as “usufruct.” U ­ nless other provisions w ­ ere made, full owner­ship of the entire estate was divided among the c­ hildren. ­These default laws ­were poorly adapted to the most common situations, where older ­couples owned equal shares of their primary residence: the ­children could demand the sale of the ­couple’s residence to get their share, thus forcing the surviving parent to leave his or her home. As child-­care provider Jeanne Le Vennec said in the preceding chapter, “We haven’t worked our ­whole lives just to be thrown out ­after!” So she and her husband (a mason), who had built their own h ­ ouse on land bought with their savings in the 1960s, opted for the “gift to survivor” mea­sure. It allows the w ­ idow or widower to enjoy use of all of the ­couple’s assets, or full owner­ship of one-­quarter of the assets of the deceased.44 Jeanne, who became tenant for life of the ­whole h ­ ouse ­after the death of her husband in 1997, was thus able to keep living ­t here without worrying about the possibility of any of their seven ­children setting their sights on the l­ittle money they would have gained from the sale of the property. According to the French Wealth Survey, 2003–2004, in 2003 half of all married ­couples in the sample, and nearly three-­quarters of el­derly ­couples (where the wife is over 65), declared having used the “gift to survivor” mea­sure (see T ­ able  3.2). Use essentially varied according to the owner­ship of the primary residence, since it can also be applied to non-­ real-­estate property like investments or savings. Among el­derly c­ ouples owning their home, it was used by 78 ­percent of ­couples where the husband was a laborer and 76 ­percent of ­those where the husband was a cadre or a knowledge worker. In ­t hese two social groups, it was used by only 34 ­percent of c­ ouples owning no real estate, which seems to indicate that spouses ­were only informed of the existence and importance of this par­ tic­u­lar civil-­law mea­sure when they purchased their primary residence. A dif­fer­ent tool, a dif­fer­ent public. Since the 2000s, some l­awyers offer clients from upper social classes with high cultural capital the possibility of divorcing u ­ nder “collaborative law.” This practice is derived from the Anglo-­A merican ­legal tradition. Its princi­ple is the amicable settlement of a divorce through a series of highly formalized meetings between the divorcing parties and their respective l­awyers that eventually lead to a written



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  99

­table 3.2. ​Percentage of se­nior ­couples that have made a gift to the survivor Percentage making gift All

72.2

Real estate assets None Primary residence Other nonbusiness real estate Primary residence and other real estate

47.1 80.7 67.9 80.0

The man’s socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, business head Cadre, higher intellectual profession Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer

82.3 78.1 72.9 75.8 70.8 64.2

Homeowners: The man’s socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, business head Cadre, knowledge worker Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer

85.3 79.2 76.4 85.0 86.1 77.7

Owns no real estate: The man’s socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, business head Cadre, knowledge worker Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer ­Owners of securities

71.6 74.2 33.7 44.1 29.8 34.0 76.8

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​-­0250b​.­x ml. Field: All different-­sex ­couples composed of a person of reference and his wife, age 65 or older. N = 1,170. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: “72.2 ­percent of ­couples wherein the ­woman was age 65 or older had made a gift to the survivor.” For a pre­sen­ta­t ion of the methodological choices that went into making this t­ able and the logistic regressions on the marital practices observed in 2003–2004 (marriage, marital regime, and gift to the survivor), see Statistical Appendix G.

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agreement outlining the arrangements for their uncontested divorce. When a c­ ouple decides to use collaborative law to divorce, each spouse must choose from a list of specially trained ­lawyers. Being on this list gives a ­lawyer access to a segment of the market with an especially solvent clientele. This practice was developing in the region of western France that we studied, where it was billed at a flat rate of 2,500 euros but in practice also led to a number of overrun charges, billed at 200 euros an hour. “It’s actually quite financially attractive for us,” the l­ awyer Grâce Dupont-­ Bernard concluded at an informational session on collaborative law for fellow members of the Bar. Several colleagues in attendance at this meeting highlighted the fact that collaborative law cannot be offered to ­legal aid recipients and condemned this as “two-­tier justice.” Collaborative law is available only to ­people with adequate economic capital, as practitioner Arnaud Thiercelin acknowledged: “My colleagues deny it, but t­ here is also a financial capacity prob­lem, ­because as ­you’ve seen, it takes a lot of time. A lot of time. . . . ​So the limit is the financial capacity [of the parties in the case], and, to my thinking, ­legal aid clients.” Other than ­these financial stakes, the ­lawyers practicing collaborative law insist upon the cultural skills it requires of the divorcing parties. Grâce Dupont-­Bernard repeated on several occasions that the “four-­person appointments” (the separating parties and their respective l­awyers) took an average of two and a half hours, and only ­those clients “of a certain cultural level” were able “be sufficiently focused” and “know how to make an effort.” Arnaud Thiercelin regretted having undertaken the pro­cess with one client, a train conductor for the national train com­pany, who, he said, had “a somewhat ­limited intellectual capacity.” Collaborative law is thus reserved in practice for a local elite composed of businesspeople, members of the professions, man­ag­ers, and teachers with economic and cultural resources high enough to conform to its demands. It allows ­lawyers to draw at least part of their clientele from the social groups closest to their own, solvent, with whom they can build an in-­group complicity propitious to coming to arrangements in the shadow of the law. The three “four-­person appointments” in collaborative law that we observed in this region ­were singular for their durations (from an hour and a quarter to two hours) and for the breadth of topics covered, from the ­couples’ assets and taxes to their intimate lives (all three addressed histories of adultery at length). Such an extensive exposition of private life and wealth



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  101

arrangements in the confidential setting of the law office was intended to prevent them from being discussed in front of a judge, in court. Collaborative law nonetheless seems to be a poor fit for the wealthiest clients. In Paris, Clotilde Reymbaut-­Dawkins, a l­awyer specialized in private international law for the very wealthy (she charges 450 euros an hour) and an avid promoter of the practice in France, only practices it with French clients whose assets are all located in the country. She says this is ­because it is not suitable for the “financially complex cases” of her international clientele. Such cases lead to other forms of negotiation between ­lawyers, who quite often call upon other professions (mediators, psychologists, notaires, certified accountants, tax specialists) and do not require clients to be as physically pre­sent or reveal as much of their personal lives.

Dif­fer­ent Uses of Private International Law, Depending on Social Position While ­lawyers and judges generally describe f­ amily law as “not very technical” and “not very sophisticated,” private international law is an exception. It h ­ andles successions and divorces with foreign ele­ments (concerned parties having a foreign nationality, a place of residence or assets located in a country other than France, a marriage in a foreign country, and so on). In theory, it can concern the separations of working-­class ­couples with foreign roots (if one party has foreign citizenship, if the spouses own property outside of France, if they contracted their marriage abroad, and so forth), just as much as Johnny Hallyday’s succession or the divorces of Cécile Martin-­Dubois’s elite clients. In practice, in Paris, due to the concentration of p ­ eople of considerable internationalized wealth, this specialization is asserted as a “noble” dimension of ­family law. Brigitte Cigliano, a judge at the Paris Court of Appeals’ ­family court, draws connections between the international dimension, the financial scale, and the ­legal complexity of the files in her charge: “The specificities of ­family law in Paris . . . ​it’s first of all a lot of international litigation. A lot. And then the mass, the financial scale of the cases. I’m not saying that ­there are no rich ­people in the provinces . . . ​but it’s completely dif­fer­ent. Th ­ ere’s a difference of scale that you ­can’t even imagine. . . . ​ But ­here, it’s legally complex and financially heavy. And on top of that,

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t­ here’s international law. And then t­ here’s international private f­ amily law—­ it’s so difficult that even among professors of international private law ­there’s a family-­law specialization.” Family-­law professionals do not make regular use of this sophisticated law, which in ­actual fact is reserved for wealthy foreigners and French citizens living abroad.45 The following description is of a hearing that our colleague Hélène Steinmetz observed at the trial court in a major city in southwestern France. It provides an excellent illustration of the complex stakes of transnational ­family cases in the working classes, for whom this highly specialized subfield of law is not mobilized. The case was heard in two parts. At 10:30 a.m., Abdelkrim Brahimi and his l­awyer entered the office of ­family judge Jean Brunetti. Neither Djamila Brahimi nor her ­lawyer, who had drafted the notice of adjudication for divorce on her behalf, ­were pre­sent, and the judge asked if the request had been withdrawn. The l­awyer replied that the situation was “more complicated,” and argued that this filing was excessive ­because the c­ ouple had already divorced four years ­earlier in Algeria. Abdelkrim Brahimi exclaimed, “She’s starting the procedure knowing w ­ e’re already divorced. I d ­ on’t understand!” His l­awyer requested that Djamila Brahimi’s request for divorce be dismissed and that she be fined to pay her ex-­husband’s ­legal fees, following article 700 of the Civil Procedure Code. Judge Brunetti reserved his decision and reassured the man that, in the absence of an argument from the other party, the judge would have no reason to not dismiss her request for a divorce in France. More than an hour l­ater, ­after hearings for two other cases, Djamila Brahimi’s l­awyer entered the judge’s office and apologized for her tardiness: she had been held up by another case, which happens a lot to l­awyers who work for l­egal aid and carry a heavy caseload. “I d ­ idn’t withdraw,” she assured him. She explained that her client had previously filed for an at-­fault divorce in France in 2006, and that Abdelkrim Brahimi then went to Algeria alone to get a quick divorce. The ­lawyer verbally admitted that she should have “concluded,” meaning that she could have prepared written arguments based on specific points of international private law. Specifically, she should have contested the validity of the Algerian divorce ­under French law, since the wife was not pre­sent at the hearing in Algeria. But ­because she had not raised this point in her written conclusions, this argument could not be retained in her client’s ­favor. The ­lawyer did not insist: “I’m beating



Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak  103

myself up about it, sir, let’s leave it ­there. What ­matters to me is the child support; I’ll start postdivorce proceedings. I take note of my failings in this case.” A ­ fter some discussion with the judge, she asked him to dismiss the appeal: “So long as you d ­ on’t apply Article 700, w ­ e’ll grin and bear it!,” she concluded. The ­lawyer thus simply revoked her client’s request for a divorce, and the client was not ­there to give her opinion. In other words, she tacitly accepted the legitimacy of the divorce in the form of repudiation that was chosen by the husband alone, in Algeria. Beyond the moral issues involved in this choice, by abandoning an at-­fault divorce in her client’s ­favor in France, Djamila Brahimi’s l­awyer also gave up a chance at vari­ous financial compensations, especially a compensatory allowance but perhaps even payment of damages. International private law could have been used to contest the validity of the divorce pronounced in Algeria, but the wife’s ­lawyer ­didn’t take the time to do it in writing, preferring to fall back on a much more routine procedure: a postdivorce request for child support. One can surmise that, when paid a set fee by ­legal aid, this is how the l­awyer saves time and manages to earn a living. This ­lawyer’s practices have nothing in common with the customized ser­vice of offices specialized in wealthy clients with international assets. ­Legal professionals’ use of ­legal tools on a case-­by-­case basis depends on more than the potential and complexity of the case. In f­amily cases, a ­limited number of specialists master private international law, and they reserve their work for a privileged clientele. Generally speaking, members of the working classes deal with ­lawyers who are less invested in their cases, which ­don’t pay as well. ­These inequalities of treatment are also gendered, ­because, due to income inequalities between men and w ­ omen, the latter are more likely to use ­legal aid: one in three ­women with a case in ­family court is represented through ­legal aid, but only one in six men.46 Families are unequal before capital: they have a lot, a l­ittle, or none at all, and have unequal means to use the law to pass this wealth along to the next generation. According to their social milieu, men and w ­ omen are unequally advised in the accounting operations that make their economic arrangements official at the time of succession or separation. Regardless of their social background, w ­ omen have more difficulty than men defending their interests where transferable assets are concerned. The greater and more diversified the ­family wealth is, the more time, skill, and sophisticated l­egal tools ­lawyers and notaires ­will devote to serving

104   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

their clients’ economic (and especially fiscal) interests. The scale and refinement of ­these accounting games with the law vary considerably according to the volume and composition of wealth (exclusively employment income, financial assets, real estate, professional property, and so on) and according to the relationship that is established between family-­law professionals and their clients. In the wealthy upper classes, who are also often highly endowed with cultural capital, men benefit the most from ­legal professionals’ investment in their clients. Inversely, in the working classes with no assets, and even in the lower tier of the propertied classes, ­women rarely enjoy personalized counsel even though the economic stakes can be of vital importance, especially in separations. To understand the extent to which the activity of l­egal professionals contributes to deepening the economic inequalities between men and ­women in dif­fer­ent social worlds, despite ­today’s formally egalitarian law, we ­will next, in Chapter 4, take a detailed look at how they do their calculations.

4 Sexist Accounting ­under Cover of Egalitarian Law

P

ierre delmas has an influential position at the High Council of Notaires. When we meet him, he is 65 years old and has just transferred to his son his partnership shares in a large notarial office in southwestern France. In an interview, despite the fact that he is addressing a w ­ oman (Sibylle), he makes particularly explicit assumptions that she shares his clientele’s concern with passing professional assets on to a male heir: “In my region ­we’ve never cared for reserved portions of estates when it’s a ­matter of preserving the farm.” The princi­ple of the reserved portion is the backbone of the Napoleonic Civil Code, and has ensured inheritance equality between sons and ­daughters since 1804. Article 735 of the Civil Code, modified by the Law of 3 December  2001, drives the princi­ple home by extending it to all ­children, regardless of the ­union from which they come or ­whether they ­were legitimated by marriage: “­Children or their descendants succeed to their ­father and ­mother or other ascendants, without distinction of sex or primogeniture, and even where born of dif­fer­ent ­unions.”1 Half jokingly, half provocatively, Pierre Delmas compares f­ amily farm transfer in his region to what he considers to be “Muslim law”: “­Women only have the right to half a share but are never abandoned by their ­family!”2 He concludes that “the disadvantaged ­daughters” never complain ­because they know they w ­ ill benefit from “­family solidarity” in case of need.

105

106   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

If only such words, spoken by an eminent representative of the national notarial profession in December  2014, would concern no more than a handful of farming families in an area historically known for its unequal estate distribution.3 While it is true that French f­amily law and property law no longer allow systematic discrimination against d ­ aughters in f­avor of sons in inheritance, or against wives in f­ avor of husbands in divorce, wealth inequalities between men and ­women are not eve­ning out; on the contrary, they are increasing. How is it that a formally egalitarian law cannot manage to curb this fundamental in­equality? What is the role of ­legal professionals charged with implementing it? In this chapter we w ­ ill see why and how notaires and ­lawyers contribute to ­family strategies of social reproduction that are unfavorable to ­women. Th ­ ese ­family and property law specialists legitimize and conceal the production of sexist f­amily wealth arrangements, u ­ nder the cover of formally egalitarian law.

Equal Rights: A Recent Conquest Historically, ­legal discrimination has prevented ­women from accumulating as many assets as men. This discrimination particularly concerned married ­women, but also had implications for ­daughters’ ability to inherit like their ­brothers. It was found in two forms in the two main Eu­ro­pean l­egal traditions: common law, as exists in the United Kingdom as well as most of the United States and Canada, and Civil Code, as exists in France, Germany, southern Eu­rope, and Latin Amer­i­ca. ­Until the late nineteenth c­ entury, a w ­ oman in ­Great Britain was a l­egal extension of her husband: once married, she lost control over her possessions. The form of trust called “entail” made it pos­si­ble to designate a single male heir in one’s ­will and impose restrictions of use, sale, or transfer of that inherited property, which ended up dispossessing w ­ omen. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, provides a shining example: none of Mr. Bennet’s five d ­ aughters could inherit his property, which was entailed to a distant cousin who could evict the ­widow and five ­daughters at w ­ ill, thence the imperative that at least one of the ­daughters marry well so she could support the ­others. The Married ­Women’s Property Acts improved the situation. In 1872, married British (except Scottish) w ­ omen gained f­ ree use of their revenue, and in 1882 they won the same rights as single w ­ omen: the ability to sign contracts, go to court, and transfer their



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  107

possessions in case of the separation of assets between spouses.4 The entail system was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1925. In the United States, ­these reforms ­were ­adopted state by state over the latter half of the nineteenth ­century. The abolition of discrimination in law led to greater equality between husbands and wives. It also led to greater equity in inheritance between ­brothers and ­sisters, despite the existence of freedom of testation. According to Carole Shammas, an American historian who specializes in the issue, the percentage of wealth held by ­women advanced more between 1860 and 1890 than over the preceding 200 years.5 In 1860, American ­women owned about 5 ­percent of taxable property, a percentage that climbed to 24 ­percent in 1900 and 40 ­percent in 1950, when joint owner­ship of the primary marital residence became the norm and ­women’s life expectancy r­ose faster than that of men, leading w ­ idows to inherit from their husbands. In France, the Civil Code retained some private rights dating back to the Revolution that made it pos­si­ble for ­women to accumulate wealth from 1804 onward.6 Insofar as inheritance was concerned, ­daughters ­were considered heirs of a reserved portion just like their b­ rothers. In marriage, “the community of furnishings and acquisitions” became the default situation. This not only meant that married w ­ omen could retain owner­ship of real estate inherited or acquired before the marriage, but that they could accumulate more, since all property acquired during the marriage was henceforth half owned by each spouse. In the nineteenth century, the Civil Code system was thus far more favorable to ­women than common law.7 However, u ­ ntil 1965, the wife’s rights over community property ­were yoked to the husband’s near-­total power over asset management. Married ­women w ­ ere required to get their husband’s authorization to accept inheritance, make an inter vivos gift, or acquire, sell, or mortgage property. Even u ­ nder marriage contracts providing for the separation of assets (meaning they did not jointly own anything), w ­ omen needed a general management authorization from their husbands in order to manage their own assets. In France the Law of 13 July 1965 reforming marital regimes shook this situation to its roots by changing the default regime to “the community of property acquired ­a fter marriage,” as it is to this day. This law reduced the extent of community property in the Civil Code by excluding all property (including real estate) acquired before marriage or

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inherited afterward. Most significantly, this law put an end to wives’ inability to manage their own assets and granted them the right to take ­legal action. Married w ­ omen could thereafter get a job, sign contracts, and open bank accounts without their husband’s authorization, and had ­free use of their revenues. The Law of 23 December 1985 finished the work of granting individuals autonomy in the management of community property, and replaced all references to “husband” and “wife” in the Civil Code with “spouse,” giving them identical rights in managing their conjugal assets. The l­egal discrimination that prevented w ­ omen from accumulating wealth is part of a history that is indeed recent, but nonetheless consigned to the past. In France, with the exception of paragraphs on maternity and two unmodified articles that give a glimpse of the unconscious patriarchal legacy in inheritance law, all legislation concerning resources and wealth is now gender-­neutral.8 In point of fact, though, this neutrality still takes the masculine form of nouns as default, as the French language has dif­ fer­ent forms of words for referring to a man or a w ­ oman (as in “­widow” and “widower” in En­glish), and historically the masculine form has been used to refer to men as well as to hy­po­thet­i­cal persons or mixed-­gender groups. The law thus speaks in terms of époux (male spouse) but not épouse (female spouse), défunt (male deceased person) but never défunte (female deceased person), héritier (male heir) but never héritière (female heir), donateur (male donor) but never donatrice (female donor), and even conjoint survivant (surviving male spouse, widower) and conjoint successible (male spouse eligible for inheritance), even though the last two usually designate ­widows in a­ ctual practice, given differences in age and life expectancy between husbands and wives.

Reversed Accounting The formal neutrality of princi­ples does not prevent inequalities between men and ­women from persisting or even developing when the law is put to use. We conducted research in notaires’ offices to get a grasp of the law in practice, as a pro­cess, to show that the meaning and effectiveness of law exists solely in its implementation, and with no intention of contrasting a “pure” side of law inscribed in the Civil Code and an “impure” side in practice.9



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  109

Anne Prisot-­Gallot used to be a ­lawyer in Paris, where she practiced ­family law for forty years, ­until her retirement in 2009. ­A fter an interview of more than two hours in which she reflected back on her ­career, she sent our colleague Gabrielle Schütz a ten-­page document on the changes in ­family law and their repercussions on how she practiced as a ­lawyer. She focused particularly on the stakes of the liquidation of marital property—­the partitioning of a ­couple’s assets—in divorce: “The establishment of ­t hese plans for the liquidation of marital rights, as well as the determination of the amount and modalities of execution of the compensatory allowance when one of the spouses could claim it, required a degree of work to gather ele­ments for the ‘accounting,’ find an agreement between the parties, and pre­sent ­things in such a way as to arrive at the outcome upon which they had both agreed.” Compare ­these words with the quotation from notaire Pierre Delmas at the beginning of the chapter: “In my region w ­ e’ve never cared for reserved portions of estates when it’s a m ­ atter of preserving the farm”; he went on to add that “in practice, we look at how much the person taking over the farm can give, and we make the succession fit. And we rarely go to court, ­because every­one accepts it.” At first glance, the two practices described above seem entirely unrelated. They involve dif­fer­ent professions (­lawyer, notaire) and distinct ­legal tools: the liquidation of marital assets versus the settlement of estates. But ­these two situations do have one ­thing in common: what we call the practice of reversed accounting.10 The acts drawn up by notaries authenticating the partitioning of an estate or the liquidation of marital assets at the time of settlement always take the form of inventories, attributing property to each concerned party by lot, with the value of each lot expressed in euros. If the value of a lot is higher than the share of inheritance due to its recipient, a balancing payment is determined to compensate other heirs. For example, the person who gets owner­ship of the marital home ­after a divorce owes a balancing payment to the person giving up his or her share; the same princi­ple applies when a ­family home is passed on to an heir, who then has to buy out his or her siblings’ shares. Mathematically speaking, ­these are very ­simple operations, consisting of the addition and division of assets and liabilities in the following sequence: (1) inventory of property, (2) valuation of property, (3) valuation of the entire estate by addition and calculation of the share of

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each heir by division, (4) division of property into lots with values as close as pos­si­ble to the calculated shares, and (5) if need be, payment of balancing payment(s) to compensate for unequal shares. But notaire Pierre Delmas and ­lawyer Anne Prisot-­Gallot describe a very dif­fer­ent version of this accounting procedure: in practice, the sequence works in reverse. F ­ amily members and ­legal professionals first of all come to a consensus on the final result—­the distribution of property and compensations. In the notaire’s words, “We look at how much the person taking over the farm can give”: this is what he calls the framework of the succession. And only ­after that come the assessments (what is each asset worth?), and even the inventory (what is counted?), conducted so that the ­legal framework seems to be respected. During a research seminar to which he had been invited, notaire Pierre Delmas gave twelve jurists and sociologists an equally explicit description of the official instruments of inheritance law, as well as the informal techniques, used to pass farms along to a single male heir: “The way we used to do it, it was very ­simple: by underestimating assets, by setting exaggerated deferred wages, and by using the disposable share of the estate, of course.” The disposable share of the estate is the portion of the succession of which the deceased has ­free disposal: half if he or she only had one child, a third if ­t here are two, a quarter if three or more. The Civil Code included this ­legal tool in part so that one heir could still be favored somewhat over the ­others. As to the debt of deferred wages, it allows the descendant of a farmer to get official recognition for his or her unpaid labor on the farm, which should be compensated at the time of the partitioning of the estate.11 Th ­ ese are two perfectly ­legal techniques written clearly into the law, but the overvaluation of deferred wages and the undervaluation of professional assets to be passed on are nonetheless fine examples of the unofficial leeway notaires have in valuating assets.

Valuations and Inventories in the Shadow of the Market Most financial assets that circulate between relatives have a set monetary value determined at a given moment (bank account balance, stocks). However, real estate (buildings and land) and professional assets have to be valuated even when they w ­ ill not necessarily be put up for sale. Property valuation done through notaires’ offices is thus also done in the shadow of



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the market. In the background of f­ amily wealth arrangements, market value is nothing more than a reference, a “metaprice,” a theoretical price level that is unlikely to be met but that influences the determination of a value as a basis for reflection, gauging potential or fixing a point of reference. The “effective price” is actually determined through the coordination of the parties concerned by the arrangements.12 Consequently, the real price is established differently according to ­whether real estate is to be sold to a third party, granted to one member of a separating ­couple, or allotted to one heir in exchange for balancing payments. In the first situation, the property is sold on the market for the best pos­si­ble price, often with the intervention of intermediaries such as real estate agents, and the sum is split among heirs (in the case of succession) or ex-­partners (in the case of separation) according to their official rights to the property. In the second situation, the transaction takes place in the notaire’s office without the property ever ­going on the market. Even though fiscal law requires notaires to reference its market value, relations between the relatives weigh heavi­ly on the determination of a transaction value. The following example of a seven-­year divorce pro­cess that went through more or less conflictual periods between the initial separation and its finalization gives a sense of just how variable the valuation of a ­house can be. Emmanuel Ruffaut (owner of a construction business) and Sophie Pourquerie (associate professor of law) ­were married in 2001, ­under the “separation of assets” regime, shortly ­after buying together a ­house in a town in the Pays de la Loire for 60,980 euros. The following year they had a lot of work done on the h ­ ouse (heating, insulation, electricity, bay win­dow installed). In 2006 Sophie left the marital home to live in the city where she taught, while Emmanuel stayed ­behind. In his notice of assignation issued in April 2008, he offered to buy the h ­ ouse by making a balancing payment of 33,517 to his wife (half of the total estimated value of the property, 67,034 euros). This was at the peak of their court b­ attle over the physical custody of their only son (they ­were in the midst of an appeal). Their ­lawyers’ ­later memos in 2009 and 2010 mentioned several values for the ­house. Emmanuel Ruffaut revalued the ­house at 100,000 euros and then 121,000 euros; Sophie Pourquerie thought the h ­ ouse was worth 214,000 euros. Both sides cited local real estate listings to back up their vastly divergent estimates. When the divorce judgment was made in May 2010, the indivision had not yet been liquidated: the ­house was still a joint property and

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Emmanuel still lived in it. The f­ amily court asked the departmental chamber of notaires “to delegate a notaire in this case, and if, in the period of one year ­after the pre­sent judgment has gone into effect, the liquidation has not been completed, the notaire w ­ ill transmit a statement of difficulty to the court.” In June 2011, the named notaire contacted three real estate agencies to assess the price of the ­house. Each agency provided a price range in the summer of 2011: one gave a range of 152,000–153,000 euros, the second 158,000–164,000 euros, and the third 178,000–180,000 euros. The notaire proposed an average of 165,833 euros in several liquidation proposals. Ultimately, Emmanuel Ruffaut announced that he did not want to buy out his ex-­wife’s share and was ready to sell the ­house. It was sold to a third party in January 2013 for 175,000 euros. The valuation of property in a notaire’s office has ­little in common with the classic economic fiction that the market price depends on the disembodied entities of supply and demand. It is the contrary in this instance. Valuation is directly embedded in the state of the relationship between the relatives. As we can see in the divorce of Sophie Pourquerie and Emmanuel Ruffaut, this relationship can change: in 2008, when the court ­battle was raging, their respective valuations of the ­house ­were extremely far apart; they got closer when the ­house was the last remaining ­thing to ­settle in the divorce (2010–2011); their interest became the same once Emmanuel Ruffaut de­cided to leave the ­house and it was put up for sale (2013). Generally, it is in the interest of the person or ­people who buy a piece of property from their relatives that the estimate of the property be as low as pos­si­ble. In contrast, the interest of the other f­amily members may be the maximal valuation, to get the highest pos­si­ble balancing payment. Notaires play a decisive role in the construction of such equivalencies, ­because their profession is the guarantor of the property valuation. The tax administration acts as a watchdog, as it can penalize an excessive undervaluation. Consequently, notaires often impress upon their clients the necessity of justifying the retained estimates, which is why other professionals like real estate agents and auctioneers are often called in for estimates. But as we can see in the case of Emmanuel Ruffaut and Sophie Pourquerie, estimates can be contradictory. Each of the differing estimates can be used to respond to certain necessities in the settlement of an estate, the liquidation of a marital regime, or when setting a compensatory allowance while aiming for tax optimization, an objective we ­will return to shortly.



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The formalization of the circulation of ­family wealth negotiated in ­these offices hangs not only on the valuation of assets but also on the preceding inventory of what should be included in the accounting. In law this inventory is ­limited to “property”—­a ll manner of assets. In practice, the inventory pro­cess can put a wide range of ­things into equivalency. In addition to assets, the list might thus include farmwork (this is the case of the debt of deferred wages), care work (of ­children or el­derly parents), domestic labor (house­work by wives), time, educational degrees, and so on. This heterogeneous accounting, with ele­ments dotted throughout the long history of the f­ amily, may be more or less recognized and legitimate in the eyes of the law. Official inventories avoid a wide swath of private transactions between relatives, even though the discussions leading up to ­these inventories take them carefully into account. Let’s go back again to the case of the Pilons, the f­amily with a bakery near Bordeaux. The discussions about how Marcelle’s estate should be partitioned among her four c­ hildren had mentioned not only the officially transferred property (land, h ­ ouses, the bakery business, and the physical shop, and the sums to be reimbursed in bread and pastry), but also the property that was omitted from the official accounts (the pastry business), as well as a number of peripheral expenses and donations such as tuition paid by the parents, voluntary l­abor at the ­family bakery, and professional and conjugal sacrifices made in its name (while Sibylle was d ­ oing research with the ­family, the Pilon ­sisters w ­ ere wondering if the baker Pierre’s marital prob­lems might be related to his obligation to live near his relatives). ­Mother, son, and d ­ aughters constructed equivalencies between all t­ hese ele­ments, but the notaire’s formal document, which eventually outlined the inheritance and gift arrangements, only mentioned some so as to establish a partition that met the requirements of civil law, most strikingly by omitting a pastry business worth tens of thousands of euros. This omission legitimated the equivalency operated between the pastry shop and the girls’ educations, while also reducing the taxes related to the prior gift. In practice, family-­law professionals start with an outcome (passing down a specific property to a specific heir or attributing a specific property to one spouse in a divorce) and then conduct the inventory and valuations in a way that makes them arrive at the desired end. As ­lawyer Anne Prisot-­ Gallot put it, it is about “presenting t­ hings in a way so as to arrive at the result upon which the parties had agreed.” The privacy of notaires’ and

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l­awyers’ offices offers a safe space to play with the accounting, making it pos­si­ble to mold ­family economic arrangements into the l­egal framework. Relatives and ­legal professionals’ joint production of what we have termed ­family wealth arrangements can be more or less laborious or conflictual. ­These arrangements reflect a consensus about the worth and distribution of f­amily wealth, consensus that is then legitimated through the practice of reversed accounting.

Structuring Assets for Some, Payoffs for the Rest If reversed accounting contributes to the widening of the wealth gap between men and ­women, it is b­ ecause all property is not equal. We saw in Chapter 2 that certain families have assets “that must be kept” that are more symbolically and eco­nom­ically impor­tant and preferentially passed along to sons. The nature of ­these assets varies according to the ­family situation and social background. It can be an investment portfolio of stocks and bonds in the wealthiest families (Amazon stock in the Bezos f­amily, for example), a ­family business or professional property (the Pilon’s bakery), a ­family home, land that has appreciated due to a prime location, or a vacation ­house (the Renoir ­family beach ­house). Each of ­these assets can be described as the structuring asset in the estate. They define the framework upon which ­legal professionals build ­family wealth arrangements. Reversed accounting makes ­these assets the starting point and keystone of all calculations: once a notaire knows who ­will get the structuring asset, he or she establishes acceptable financial or in-­k ind compensation for the other heirs. Statistical data shows that only and eldest sons receive more of ­these structuring assets “that must be kept,” as well as more gifts in advance, than ­daughters or subsequent sons. Our observations in notaires’ offices demonstrate that this distribution of ­family wealth—­structuring assets for some, compensation for the ­others—is far from being eco­nom­ically egalitarian. Only through subtle accounting ploys do the amounts appear to be equal in the formal documents prepared by notaires (and in statistical surveys). Past changes to the Civil Code have made it increasingly easy to use reversed accounting to manage successions. In 1804, Napoleon’s code defined equality between co-­heirs as an equality in value but also in nature:



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“it is expedient, if it can be, to dispose in each lot the same quantity of movables and immovables, or rights or credits of the same nature and value” (Article 832 of the 1804 Civil Code).13 Heirs inherited all assets jointly as a group, and then t­ hese assets ­were to be divvied up into lots of equivalent value and nature for each. If such a partition was impossible, especially if the property could not be physically divided, the only solution left was selling the property (Article 827, paragraph 1 of the 1804 Civil Code). Throughout the twentieth ­century, exemptions to this princi­ple of equality in nature ­were gradually introduced. They established more favorable ­legal conditions for transfer of certain physical assets to only one heir—­precisely the structuring assets that we have identified: housing and businesses. Housing of modest worth starting in 1922, small farms in 1938, all farms, housing, and commercial, trade, and industrial businesses in 1961, and lastly, in the early 1980s, shares in companies, could be designated as a “preferential allocation” (the asset is left to one heir on the provision that she or he pay compensation to the ­others). The 2006 law reforming successions eliminated any reference to the shares’ equality in nature: “each copartitioner receives assets for a value equal to that of his rights in the indivision” (Article 826, paragraph 2 of the Civil Code). At age 30, Marc Pouget has just taken over from his ­father as a partner in a large notarial firm (six partners, thirty-­seven employees) in a rural area of southwestern France. His clientele lives all over France, some even abroad, as a result of a massive wave of emigration by part of the region’s rural population to Paris in the latter half of the twentieth ­century. Some of ­these clients have significant professional and real estate assets. In an interview, the young notaire explained to us that successions w ­ ere easier b­ ecause shares no longer had to be equal in nature: Even if I have a ­family disagreement, I can appoint one of my ­children as sole legatee by ­will. If I have a prob­lem with another, it’s not a big deal, the one to whom I leave every­thing takes possession of the assets. A ­ fter, it’s just a question of property valuation, so, economic negotiation. To take the example of a ­house, if I want to be sure that it ­will go to someone and that it ­won’t be impeded by an indivision, ­here’s what I do: I leave the asset to one of my ­children whom I get along with well, who, upon my death, as legatee, can benefit from it and have use of it, and h ­ e’ll only have to

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s­ ettle the economic question, that is, his ­brother’s rights to the inheritance in liquid assets.

When a Succession Revolves around a Business ­ amily businesses offer a classic example of how structuring assets can be F transferred to a single heir, most often a man, ­under the auspices of formally egalitarian law.14 At the turn of the twenty-­first c­ entury, Céline conducted a long-­term ethnographic study of young winegrowers taking over their parents’ business in the Cognac region.15 All estate planning in ­these families revolves around the transfer of the vineyard to a single heir, almost invariably male. ­W hether the ­family is wealthy or not, the vineyard is the structuring asset around which the estate is structured, and the primary objective is to pass it along without splitting it up. The rest—­the compensation of the other heirs—is seen by the participants in t­ hese arrangements (meaning first and foremost the farmer-­parents and their notaire) as a secondary issue. In the most modest vineyard-­owning families, whose living standards are close to t­hose of farmworkers, t­here is nothing to transfer but a l­ittle farm consisting of a few hectares of vines, buildings, and farm equipment. ­Family wealth arrangements in such families consist mainly of making other heirs wait. Th ­ ere are several l­egal tools at the parents’ disposal. The one who takes over the farm can share it for a long time in indivision with his siblings, paying them for owner­ship of the capital as best he can according to fluctuations in his revenue. So long as this b­ rother lacks the means to buy out their shares, the other heirs cannot demand the end of the indivision or ­else they would be risking the ­future of the ­family business. To ward off this eventuality, ­legal advisors of farmers’ ­unions and technical support organ­izations and notaires recommend that their clients form farmland owner­ship groups. In this case, the heir taking over the farm becomes a tenant of the land he co-­owns with his siblings. This gives him time to buy them out with the cash he can spare, and to renegotiate the rental cost and payment plan in the meantime. Estate arrangements also frequently include the techniques described by Pierre Delmas, the national representative of notaires: undervaluation of professional assets and overestimation of deferred wages, in order to come to the lowest balancing payment pos­si­ble.



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In wealthier grape-­growing families of the Cognac region, whose living standards are close to ­those of the bourgeoisie or even the grande bourgeoisie, successions often include real estate (rental properties in the region, vacation homes by the sea or in the mountains) and financial assets (stock and bond portfolios) on top of major professional assets—­vineyards, farm buildings and equipment, and, most significantly, a stock of cognac that grows more valuable with age. Th ­ ese vari­ous assets are not equivalent, however. The estate is always structured by the transfer of the vineyard to the heir that ­will take over its operation. Other siblings receive compensations that appear to be eco­nom­ically equivalent in the notarial documents, but in practice are the result of significant intervention in attributed worth through the systematic undervaluation of professional assets and overvaluation of compensations. This procedure makes it pos­si­ble to pass the vineyard on to a single heir, sometimes two when it is im­mense. Time is a crucial dimension in all ­these operations of inventory, valuation, and distribution of property, the stuff of which ­family wealth arrangements are made. Vineyard-­owning families in Cognac, like business-­owning families in general, are thus champions of estate planning, and make many more gifts and inter vivos distributions than other families.16 The first gifts, sometimes given before the parents retire, allow the f­ uture farm head to establish himself in his role. For instance, if the farm business purchases new land to expand the farm, the parents as business o­ wners may give the new plots to one of their sons. They then yield the rest of the farm, ­either gradually or at the time of retirement, to this heir who is already invested in the business’s success. The l­egal advisors of farming organ­izations and notaires both stress the importance of time in a succession, drumming it into them that farm transfer is “planned a generation in advance.” At each step, more or less undervalued compensations may also be given to the other siblings. Spreading the pro­cess out over time increases the options for strategic accounting. Plus, the pace of ­these donations depends on the temporality of the ­family business: the siblings of the ­brother taking over the farm may end up receiving balancing payments at the farm’s pace rather than according to the pace of their needs (purchase of a h ­ ouse, paying for c­ hildren’s education, and so on). In the Cognac region, it is very clear that this way of planning ­family wealth arrangements benefits boys, b­ ecause girls are only rarely chosen as the heir to the ­family winegrowing business. Why are notaires ready to do

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the reversed accounting allowing the transfer of an undivided structuring asset, in defiance of the princi­ple of equality between heirs that is central to the Civil Code?

The Egalitarianism of Notaires, and Yet . . . Generally speaking, notaires are deeply attached to the princi­ple that estates have reserved proportions that ensure equality in the inheritances of male and female heirs. When we met with notaires individually for recorded interviews in which they discussed their cases, many of them expressed this attachment enthusiastically, all the more so ­because of the subject of the study which then served as our letter of introduction to their offices. We had been charged with evaluating changes in the practices of notaires over the ten years following the 2006 reform of the Civil Code, which for the first time since 1804 authorized the signing of “succession pacts” wherein heirs with legally reserved shares of the estate could abandon all or part of their rights to inheritance in advance of the succession. The provision for “this anticipated relinquishing” (known in French as RAAR, described in Chapter 3) was one of the leading mea­sures of the Law of 23 June 2006. It becomes relevant when a gift is made to one heir. Other heirs with reserved shares may then relinquish their ­future right to demand that this gift be taken into account in the final estate settlement, even if it chips into their share. In other words, they may agree to receiving a smaller share than would normally be their due. The French National Assembly report that inspired the law specified that t­hese f­amily pacts w ­ ere intended to facilitate the transfer of businesses or ensure the care of a disabled child or one in difficulty. Although national notarial organ­izations had supported this provision, most notaires we spoke with confessed to being “rather uncomfortable with it.” Several expressed their discomfort at the idea of asking ­people to give up their rights. One of them was Bernard Lecart, a notaire in an in­de­pen­ dent practice in an area with a flourishing white-­collar employment market in southwestern France. He explained, somewhat hesitantly, why he had never used the RAAR, and ended up singing the praises of reserved shares: Professor Catala [a famous jurist specialized in private law who died in 2012] said it was hy­poc­risy. How could someone relinquish



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their reserved share without being, in some way [hesitating], pressured a l­ittle bit by the ­family. That was what he meant by hy­poc­ risy. I think it’s true. I mean, it’s quite rare for ­people to relinquish a right granted to them by law. Especially since, say what you like, but still, reserved shares, they exist for a reason!

Jacques Bulond, a notaire about 50 years old, was more scathing. His office is on the outskirts of Paris, in a gentrifying working-­class city whose population has a significant share of families of North African origin, mostly Muslims. He expressed his fear that the RAAR could be used to dispossess ­daughters, a tendency he attributed to his clientele with North African roots: Well as far as that goes, it’s personal, but I ­ don’t like the princi­ple. . . . ​A ­daughter who w ­ ill accept signing an RAAR ­under pressure from her f­ather so that the b­ rothers ­will have all the inheritance . . . ​once again, I’ve never had this prob­lem, but it leaves the door wide open to absolutely anything! . . . ​So, to be crystal-­ clear, I would be rather worried about this kind of pressure in families from Algeria or Morocco. . . . ​It’s not just in t­ hose families but, culturally speaking, it’s still rather prevalent. Among my clientele from the Maghreb, I indeed have female clients who explain how successions work in Morocco or Algeria, while they live in France, and they are terrified about what ­w ill happen with their assets back ­there, ­because of all the French culture that they have acquired. . . . ​But, through an RAAR, you can arrive at exactly the same outcome.

Notaires thus position themselves as the guarantors of the establishment of “balanced” successions. “We ­don’t do RAARs ­every day, and so much the better, ­because if you go into an office where you find a ton of RAARs in the official register, it means that ­there ­were a ton of imbalanced transfers. And that is certainly not our job!” explained Christophe Lebourg, a notaire who took over his ­father’s partnership in a large firm in southwestern France that registers nearly 250 successions a year. So, what is the notaire’s job? Why do t­ hese professionals, apparently so concerned with respecting the principle of the reserved portion and equity among heirs, have no compunctions about practicing reversed accounting to pass certain structuring

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assets on to a favored heir? In fact, notaires are proud of the technical skills they must use to give the appearance of equality to an unequal partition and build a consensus around it. They consider such skills to be the sign of a good notaire and believe them to be necessary inasmuch as they can ensure the transfer of property “that must be kept” to the person the notaire and their clients consider to be “the rightful heir.”

The “Rightful Heir” Is Male Notaires generally have a gendered and socially situated conception of “the rightful heir” that fits that of propertied families. They are particularly attached to ensuring the continuity of f­ amily businesses b­ ecause they themselves come from families that owned their own business and profited from significant gifts of professional assets in order to practice theirs. The economic morality of such families, which try to pass their entire professional property on to one of their heirs (if pos­si­ble, the one the “most apt” to make the business flourish), thus aligns with the economic morality of ­these professionals of property law. Many notaires imagine the rightful heir to be male, and an in-­family transfer to normally be from f­ ather to son. This is manifest in notaires’ own professional writings. Take, for example, the website notaires.fr, “the official website of the notaires of France.” The page on business transfer is illustrated by a photo­graph of a man with a receding hairline but in the prime of life with a ­little blond boy in a blue-­and-­white-­striped shirt perched on his shoulders, their clasped hands raised to the sky.17 The pages on gifts and successions are illustrated by a photo­graph of a f­ather and son seated on a pier, the f­ather’s arm around his son’s shoulders and the son’s hand raised to protect his eyes as he gazes into the distance.18 The banner at the top of the page is of a pair of big male hands holding smaller female hands holding the hands of a child. Lastly, the “civil real estate companies” page shows a picture of a young ­father in a couch with his laptop on his knees, his son’s arms around his neck, his ­daughter leaning on him.19 Notaires’ patriarchal repre­sen­ta­tions in estate ­matters are also found in their “advisory notes,” ­little pamphlets printed by notarial organ­izations and left in office waiting rooms, providing practical advice on a range of ­legal topics. Th ­ ese pamphlets are written in the male neutral (“he” rather than “he or she”), and all the examples are described in the masculine. To



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illustrate the “transfer of sole-­owner business to a third party, relative or not, as a gift or inter vivos distribution,” one brochure starts with the following account: “An inter vivos distribution is granted by a ascendant to his seven [male] c­ hildren and one of his [male] grandchildren who has the qualities necessary to taking over the business.”20 Explaining what a “gradual” (two-­step) gift is: “The donor gives a studio apartment to his child, with the proviso that he transfer it to his nephew (the son of another child of the donor) upon his death. A gradual gift can only come from the share of the estate that can be disposed of at the donor’s discretion. But [male] heirs with reserved shares may accept that it also concern their share of the reserved portion.”21 The same ­thing for illustrating a “residual” (two-­ step) gift: “The donor gives a real estate portfolio to his child for him to manage (purchase, sale of titles, ­etc.) with the proviso that he transfer it to his child (the donor’s grand­son).”22 We’ve made a thorough search of this professional and commercial lit­er­a­ture on gifts and successions, and not once did we find an example citing a w ­ oman or a girl.

The ­Widow, or the Antithesis of the “Rightful Heir” The opposite of the rightful heir, likely to make ­family wealth flourish, is the figure of the ­widow, an outsider suspected of appropriating this wealth for herself and letting it wane. This figure is still quite common ­today, as recently illustrated by the coverage of Laeticia Hallyday, the last wife of Johnny Hallyday, the “French Elvis.” Media reported her husband’s friends calling her a “black ­widow” or “manipulative.”23 The current-­events weekly L’Express reported that Johnny Hallyday himself was aware of the consequences that would follow the reading of his w ­ ill: “Laeticia’s gonna get buckets of shit thrown smack in the face. Help her to hold on,” he was said to have told some close friends.24 At the Nanterre tribunal, where his adult ­children Laura Smet and David Hallyday challenged their ­father’s ­will, the star ­lawyers who represented them systematically and strategically referred to Laeticia as “Madame Boudou” (her maiden name) and “the fifth wife” (although she was actually his fourth, b­ ecause he married a previous wife twice).25 The national daily paper Le Monde described their tactics thus: To the savvy and “manipulative” businesswoman who, ­a fter “six successive w ­ ills, three marriage contracts, and two changes of

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marital regime,” became the sole beneficiary of the trust established to manage the singer’s assets, to the all-­powerful ­w idow who engaged Michèle Marchand, high priestess of celebrity magazines, to defend her image, they opposed the “intense pain” of a ­daughter and son shut out of the final moments of their ­father’s life and forced to go to court to request the right to hear his last recordings.26

The terms of addressing Laeticia—­using her maiden name instead of her married name, using the number of Johnny’s marriages as if this ­wasn’t his last—­a lso led to devaluing the w ­ idow’s conjugal ties to Johnny (despite their marriage of twenty-­three years) relative to the ties of kinship between the singer and his two adult c­ hildren. The arguments of the celebrity l­ awyers representing Laura and David are classic in the long tradition of ­family law. Historically, the French Civil Code has indeed distrusted w ­ idows as heirs. Since its establishment in 1804, and unchanged for nearly two centuries, the order of inheritance (the legally defined list of who benefits from a succession, and in what order, in the absence of a w ­ ill) gave the priority to “blood relations.” U ­ ntil 2001, the order of inheritance put the “surviving spouse” a­ fter the “descendants,” “ascendants,” and “favored collaterals” (siblings of the deceased and their descendants). But in eight out of ten cases, the “surviving spouse” is a w ­ oman over the age of 60.27 She could inherit from her spouse only if he had no relative up to the twelfth degree in a position to inherit, which is why it was common to make provisions for a “gift to the survivor” to at least ensure that she could keep the marital home. Since the Law of 3 December 2001, the situation of ­widows has improved, at least u ­ nder the law. They have moved ahead of favored collaterals and ascendants in the order of inheritance and may henceforth inherit e­ ither the usufruct of all estate assets (if all ­children are from their u ­ nion) or full owner­ship of a quarter of the estate (even when the deceased had ­children from other ­unions) (Article 757 of the Civil Code). ­These rights may even be expanded by arranging for a “gift to the survivor” (by granting full owner­ship of a quarter of the estate and usufruct of the remainder, for example). Three years l­ater, the 100th Congress of Notaires expressed reservations about t­ hese changes.28 Peripheral to the congress, an article by the notaire Didier Coiffard, president of the Congress’s “Liberty, Equality, Families”



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commission, speaks volumes about notaires’ distrust of ­widows in ­matters of inheritance: “The history of the rights of the surviving spouse is plagued by the balance between the concern over providing them with the means of subsistence, and the care of preserving property in the ­family line.”29 Didier Coiffard is firmly opposed to the creation of a legally reserved share for the surviving spouse when ­there are no ­children. Such a reserved share could prevent a nephew from taking over his u ­ ncle’s business, he explained. The figure of the rightful heir and the entrepreneur, both male, ­were opposed to the figure of the incompetent ­widow. Fi­nally, while the 2006 law did name the surviving spouse as the second-­ranking heir with a reserved share (­after ­children), it also gave notaires new ­legal tools to counteract ­widows’ potential control over estates. One such mea­sure is the “limitation of gift” (cantonnement de libéralités), which allows a w ­ idow who received a bequest from her husband to relinquish all or part of her inheritance in ­favor of other heirs. The notaires we met are especially fond of it. Bernard Lecart, who practices in a suburban town in southwestern France, thinks that this “very in­ter­est­ing” tool should even be expanded: When ­there is a sizable estate the spouse, if he is el­derly or has a sufficient income, may very well say, “It’s good, but I ­really ­don’t need it, I ­can’t manage it anymore ­because my age ­won’t let me, I ­don’t need it b­ ecause I have enough income, an adequate pension, and I’d rather it went to my ­children.” ­Because it’s true that management by the el­derly is a disaster! We see it ­here. . . . ​The ­people who die very old, who insisted on being the only one in charge of the ­family assets, tooth and nail, they put the ­family wealth in danger! Instead, the spouse can say, “I prefer that my ­children manage it, partly b­ ecause I ­don’t want to anymore, and also ­because I think that my c­ hildren ­will need it, to live in or to provide for their own ­children.”

Bernard Lecart developed a recent case like this. Upon the death of her husband, a retired w ­ oman inherited her primary residence and some investment properties. The ­w idow told the notaire straightaway that “she hated” maintenance and management of rental apartments and that “she ­didn’t want to hear a word about it.” Careful to not “rob ­people,” the notaire nevertheless thought that the ­widow’s pension was enough to live off of and so he “proposed a limitation of gift to [his] clients.” In the

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end, the w ­ idow only got usufruct of her main home, and gave up her rights to the investment properties in f­ avor of her c­ hildren. The notaire formed a civil real estate com­pany among the inheriting ­children to be managed by a son who worked in construction: “­They’re managing it quite nicely,” the notaire remarked. ­Every case of limitation of gift that was described to us in interview followed the same outline: a w ­ idow “who d ­ idn’t need” estate assets to live and who was thought to be “uninterested” in managing them, “reticent” to do so, or even “incapable” of it. The figure of the ­widow—­si­mul­ta­neously a ­woman, an outsider, and often elderly—is thus the exact opposite of the figure of the rightful heir—­male, young, and capable, apt to make the assets flourish and keep them in the ­family line.30

Reversed Accounting in Divorces Notaires thus play a decisive role in the implementation of ­family strategies of social reproduction based on the transfer of economic capital in the male line. This is just as true in divorces as it is in successions. In France, ex-­spouses can no longer jointly own assets ­after a divorce is finalized; all property must be divided. If their marital assets include at least one piece of real estate, the liquidation is conducted by a notaire who inventories all shared assets and liabilities and splits them in two equal parts. As with successions, however, our study shows that the work done in the notaire’s office does not usually happen in this order: liquidations of marital property are also done through reversed accounting, in which the distribution of property precedes and determines the inventory and evaluation. Unlike successions, which only involve notaires, the economic settlement of a divorce can involve a number of l­egal professionals. The liquidation of marital property conducted by notaires is tied to other financial aspects of the divorce—­child support, awarding the marital home, and / or alimony—­ that are handled by family-­law ­lawyers. A majority of ­these ­lawyers are ­women, and some of them are aware of how unfavorable the f­ amily wealth arrangements validated by notaires are for their female clients, but it is difficult for them to challenge this way of accounting. Let’s go back to Michèle Abitbol, a l­awyer in a small regional Bar in central-­western France. She has built her reputation as an especially com-



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  125

petent ­lawyer specialized in ­family law. She is one of the few ­lawyers, female or male, that we met who considered f­ amily law to be noble and technically complex. Michèle Abitbol thinks that her role in the liquidation of marital property is to act as a counterweight to the notaire’s proposals: “To not just say ‘amen’ to the notaire—­one must always have a critical eye!” Additionally, her reputation with her peers is that of a feminist who defends her female clients tooth and nail. We ­were in her office during an appointment with a client who was in the pro­cess of negotiating the liquidation of marital property in an uncontested divorce. The w ­ oman was a 42-­year-­old hospital cleaning technician, married u ­ nder the “community of assets” regime to a market gardener. She owned nearly half of the farm business (49 ­percent to his 51 ­percent), and the land and a barn ­were part of the community property (owned 50 / 50). Their ­house belonged solely to the husband, who inherited it from his parents, but major renovations had been paid for by the c­ ouple. Taken together, t­ hese ele­ments supposed the calculation of a compensatory payment from the husband to the community property. Michèle Abitbol launched into technical calculations to estimate how much her client should recover at the end of the divorce. The client, who like us was having trou­ble keeping up with the calculations, explained: “He said that made 20,000 euros for the business and the ­house. I told the gentleman that as much as I ­don’t want to make a fuss over the business, t­ here’s no reason not to for the land, barn, and ­house!” The ­lawyer cut her off and summed up the accounting: The barn you bought in 2007 for 60,000 euros. The notaire w ­ ill make an estimate of its current value. And the three plots of land you bought in 2010 for 6,000 euros, and t­here’s another plot at 2,000 euros. So that makes a total of 68,000 euros. So already, at the minimum, he owes you 34,000 euros [half of the total], not counting the business! And then ­there’s the business, your equity alone is 13,130 euros, so ­we’re already up to 50,000 euros . . . ​and ­there’s still the 61,549 euros on the associated checking account—­ we’re g­ oing to demand an explanation for that. And along with that, ­we’ve still left out the ­house and capital gains, ­because the ­house, he says it was worth 60,000 euros at the beginning, but you did 20,000 euros of work that makes the value of the h ­ ouse double or ­triple. Let’s say that the ­house is now worth 180,000 euros,

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well, not only should you recover the cost of renovations, but also the capital gains. It’s terrible for the one who pays, but you ­mustn’t let it go! And it’s Maître Abitbol who’s saying so, not the notaire or the vegetable farmer!

Michèle Abitbol set out to do the accounts in line with the law: she made a list of the community property assets, assigned them values, and then calculated her client’s share. She tried to show her that the husband’s proposal (20,000 euros for every­thing) was far out of line with what wife could claim. But once her client had left, she debriefed us on the meeting and explained how she anticipated the case would go: All of this is a ­battle between the lion and the crocodile. Once ­we’ve done the dance of the crocodiles, w ­ e’ll sit down at the ­table to talk. W ­ e’ll look at the husband’s ability to pay, relative to his bank, too, w ­ e’ll do what’s doable. You have to be realistic. But of course, I d ­ on’t tell the client that. She has to go back home feeling stronger! While right now she’s ready to let every­thing go. So no, ­there’s no question about it, she has to leave h ­ ere saying, “I’m g­ oing to stand up for myself.” But a­ fter that, t­ here is a real­ity check. You can have the financial means to wage the fight. You can have a good ­lawyer, make estimates, be psychologically strong. But ­there’s a time when you w ­ ill have to acknowledge what’s obvious, that he ­won’t have enough. She w ­ on’t be able to get that much, but it’s impor­tant that she leaves with a few assets.

This l­awyer is attentive to her client’s economic interests and prompt to be critical of the notaire’s perspective, but she also explic­itly states the limit constraining the re­spect of her client’s rights. The liquidation must not put the business at risk of bankruptcy. According to Michèle Abitbol, this limit is why divorces are especially hard on the wives of business o­ wners. Ultimately, t­ hese situations call for reversing the accounting from the order given in ­legal texts: first, attributing the business to the man, then negotiating the compensation that he can pay without putting his business owner­ ship at risk and valuating property in order to bring the planned arrangement into conformity with the letter of the law. ­Family businesses do sometimes file for bankruptcy ­after a divorce, but not ­because of the capital the man had to transfer to his wife: ­these fail-



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  127

ures are sometimes associated with the overall economic situation but are also often caused by the impossibility of operating without the unpaid l­abor of a spouse. And yet the necessity of preserving the business, taken over by the man, is a baseline assumption in many of the cases involving business ­owners that we encountered. The financial compensations for ex-­wives are calculated on the basis of this imperative. This is regardless of the work the wife previously put into ­running the business, which was often for ­free or paid the minimum. Regardless of the professional sacrifices that she made to ­free her spouse from ­house­hold obligations. Regardless of the amount of her income that went ­toward reimbursing debts incurred for her husband’s business. But the divorce does not end the ex-­wife’s solidarity in debts incurred during the marriage, including t­hose for the business. Speaking of the fate of business o­ wners’ wives, Michèle Abitbol concluded: “­There’s no doubt about it, it’s always a l­ittle unfair.” This injustice is found in small vegetable farms right up through massive companies. Think back to the Bezos divorce. The general and financial media immediately began worrying that it might imperil Jeff’s empire, half of which was actually MacKenzie’s. In the French daily Le Monde, Alexandre Piquard wrote: “With 69.5 billion dollars, MacKenzie Bezos would become the richest ­woman in the world. If by chance she should own 8 ­percent of Amazon, she could try to influence the strategy of the digital ­giant.” He then tempered his words, adding: “However, a division of Mr. Bezos’ fortune into equal parts would be surprising . . . ​, the divorces of Larry Ellison of Oracle and Sergey Brin of Google did not have significant consequences on their position in the com­pany.”31 As if it w ­ ere a foregone conclusion that keeping the executive’s power intact in the business must take priority over re­spect of the wife’s rights to marital assets. If notaires and ­lawyers help to develop such ­family wealth arrangements that clearly stray from the spirit of the law, it is b­ ecause their male and female clients share their image of capital—­and especially productive capital—as male. Is this also true for real estate?

The Marital Home as Final Settlement The gender of real estate assets is ambiguous ­because they are si­mul­ta­ neously masculine capital and feminine spaces of household production. When the marital home is granted to the ex-­wife, it is usually to ­house the

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­ other of the ­couple’s c­ hildren rather than to keep the asset in a w m ­ oman’s hands. A comparative statistical study of twelve Eu­ro­pean countries shows that ­women move out of the marital home more often than men ­after divorce, especially if they d ­ on’t have c­ hildren. W ­ omen are also more likely to exit homeownership than men. Cross-­national differences in tenure changes for homeowners are partly influenced by social housing policies and the extent of f­amily support.32 In ­England and Wales, for instance, w ­ omen are more likely than men to move out of the conjugal home and are also (especially ­those with c­ hildren) more likely to apply for social housing, whereas men are more likely to become homeowners. Júlia Mikolai and Hill Kulu conclude that marital and nonmarital separations often lead to a “downward move on the housing ladder,” especially for ­women. B ­ ecause men are more likely to continue living in the conjugal home, they are less likely to suffer from a decline in housing conditions. That said, the existence of ­children and child custody arrangements have a significant impact on which parent, if any, stays in the home.33 In France, ­women are less likely than men to be living in the conjugal home a year a­ fter separation. This is especially so when c­ ouples own their own home, or when t­ here is a significant age or earnings gap.34 In ­simple terms, fewer ­women than men have the means to keep the ­family home. The percentages get closer when the c­ ouple has c­ hildren to look a­ fter. Shared physical custody is distinctly less favorable to m ­ others, as it makes them more likely to leave the ­family home (80  ­percent), whereas less than 50 ­percent of ­fathers in the same situation move out.35 On the other hand, all other t­ hings being equal, having physical custody of the ­children (which goes to ­mothers more often than ­fathers36 ) is positively correlated with keeping the ­family home. When the ­mother is granted physical custody of the ­children, it clearly reduces the probability of her moving. Consequently, in the court marital liquidation rec­ords that we consulted, the rulings on 45 ­percent of cases involving minor ­children whose residency was assigned to the ­mother granted her the former marital home, while only 14 ­percent granted the home to the husband (see T ­ able 4.1). However, other kinds of jointly owned real estate—­secondary homes, rental properties, land—­were twice as likely to be granted to the man, and when t­ here was individually owned real estate, it was twice as likely to be owned by the man than by the ­woman (see ­Table 4.2). So, although real-­estate capital—­



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  129

­table 4.1. ​Awarding of the marital home owned by ex-­spouses in an uncontested divorce

Fate of the marital home when it was owned by the ex-­spouses

Physical custody of at least one minor child awarded to Other situations the ­mother

Sold Kept in indivision Awarded to the ­woman Awarded to the man Already the personal property of the ­woman Already the personal property of the man

20.2% 18 9.0% 8 44.9% 40 13.5% 12 5.6% 5 6.7% 6

18.8% 32 8.2% 14 22.4% 38 25.3% 43 8.8% 15 16.5% 28

All 19.3% 50 8.5% 22 30.1% 78 21.2% 55 7.7% 20 13.1% 34

Data source: “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (for information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H). Field: 259 uncontested divorce cases finalized in 2013, where the ex-­spouses owned their marital home at the time of divorce. Read: “20.2 ­percent of primary residences owned by ­couples whose divorce was uncontested ­were sold.”

­table 4.2. ​The fate of other real estate assets owned by ­couples whose divorces w ­ ere uncontested The fate of other real estate assets owned by the ­couple (secondary homes, rental property, land, other) Sold Kept in indivision Awarded to the ­woman Awarded to the man Already the personal property of the ­woman Already the personal property of the man All

Percentage Number 6.0% 14.7% 16.4% 30.2% 9.5% 23.3%

7 17 19 35 11 27

100.0%

116

Data source: “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (for information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H). Field: 116 real estate properties other than the primary residence that w ­ ere owned by c­ ouples whose uncontested divorces w ­ ere finalized in 2013. Read: “6 ­percent of real estate properties other than the primary residence owned by ­couples whose divorce was uncontested w ­ ere sold.” For a description of the methodological choices that went into creating T ­ ables 4.1 and 4.2, and the data including contested divorces, see Statistical Appendix I.

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transferable and with higher returns—is indeed gendered as masculine, granting the f­ amily home to m ­ others makes it pos­si­ble to maintain the feminine space of reproductive labor by preserving the c­ hildren’s living environment. This concern is especially vis­i­ble in the file of a ­couple who had married ­under the regime of the separation of assets and was granted an uncontested divorce in Paris in June 2013. The 54-­year-­old husband had a monthly salary of 12,300 euros plus commissions as a con­sul­tant. He owned a 38-­square-­meter (366-­square-­foot) apartment in Paris, which was his new home, as well as a comfortable vacation home and two other properties elsewhere in France that ­were prob­ably inherited and jointly owned with siblings. The wife was five years younger and worked as a special needs teacher, declaring her income at 1,700 euros a month. She was a co-­owner of an apartment in the Alps and owned one-­third of the bare property of a h ­ ouse in the Basque Country. Furthermore, the marital home consisted of two adjacent 60-­square-­meter (646-­square-­foot) apartments, one belonging to each spouse, that had been converted into a duplex. The husband had agreed to pay his wife a compensatory allowance consisting of the right to use and residency of his floor of the duplex ­until their youn­gest (third) child reached the age of 20. In this instance, the ­woman’s rights to the former marital home ­were clearly associated with her role as m ­ other caring for the child. In other cases, the wife is granted permanent full owner­ship of the primary residence as her compensatory allowance. A compensatory allowance is “an allowance intended to compensate, as far as pos­si­ble, for the disparity that the breakdown of the marriage creates in the respective ways of living” (Article 270 of the Civil Code). It is paid in the form of capital and should depend mainly on “the estimated or foreseeable assets of the spouses, both in capital and income, a­ fter liquidation of the matrimonial regime” (Article 271 of the Civil Code). In practice, as we ­will see, it is generally granted to the wife at the end of a very long marriage, over the course of which she sacrificed her professional life to take care of the ­children. Although it is rare (1.5 ­percent) for a compensatory allowance to take the form of the direct transfer of an entire property, in 14 ­percent of such cases the compensatory allowance corresponds to the other party partially or fully relinquishing rights to a balancing payment.37 This typically occurs in situations where the wife remains in the marital home and ob-



Sexist Accounting under Cover of Egalitarian Law  131

tains full owner­ship of it by accepting the husband’s share of the ­house as her compensatory allowance, instead of buying out his share (which would be half of its value if it is part of the community property). Cases like this use reversed accounting mechanisms: no l­egal professional calculates the compensatory allowance according to the criteria of Article 271 of the Civil Code. Neither does anyone estimate precisely the value of the residence, which is not put on the market. The husband has left the marital home, the wife has remained, yet she often lacks the means to buy out her husband’s half. In such a case, the c­ ouple may agree on her getting the property as a compensatory allowance. All of the calculations, legitimized by the notaire and l­ awyers, start from this initial arrangement, and as if by some fortuitous happenstance, the value of the compensatory allowance amounts precisely to the value of the husband’s share of the property. ­Women’s structural advantage as the recipient of the ­family residence is thus not equivalent to the preservation of men’s position at the helm of their business. In a ­woman’s case, being granted the home is dependent on her raising the c­ hildren, currently or in the past, and it wipes the slate clean of any remaining rights to compensatory allowance. Granting the marital home to the ­woman is a way of coming to a final settlement of the rights that could be claimed by the wife, but it is not necessarily to her advantage. As one l­awyer in Paris who specialized in asset-­partitioning issues in divorces summed it up, “As the well-­k nown phrase goes, ‘I left every­thing to my wife: the ­children, the debts, the headaches.’ ” In successions and marital liquidations alike, reversed accounting is an instrument that allows notaires (in collaboration with l­awyers in divorces) to validate wealth arrangements that are part of ­family strategies of social reproduction, all the while purporting to be in compliance with the law. Rather than explic­itly unequal treatments of heirs or spouses, notaires and ­lawyers prefer the flexible techniques they use in the secrecy of their offices. They mainly work with the inventories and valuations of assets. Reversed accounting is a discreet technique. It is discreetly implemented ­behind the closed doors of notaires’ and ­lawyers’ offices, and it is at the discretion of ­legal professionals who are versed in property rights—in other words they may use it when necessary. The technical complexity of this type of accounting, expressed in complicated ­legal language, obscures its po­liti­cal stakes.

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Do the ­legal professionals that we followed in this chapter consciously try to f­avor men over ­women? The question of intentionality is prob­ably not the right one to ask. Reversed accounting is what Pierre Bourdieu calls a logic of practice—an incorporated system of dispositions that, without forming an intention, is nonetheless able to orient practices in an unconscious and systematic way.38 Gendered repre­sen­ta­tions of the social order run throughout this mode of accounting, around the definition of the rightful heir and the good business owner, the reasonable w ­ idow and the good m ­ other, and the conceptions of which property should be passed down the ­family line and which may be passed along to a wife. Economic transfers between relatives bear the traces of subconscious sexism, incorporated into the very ways that notaires and l­awyers calculate, that conceal and legitimize them u ­ nder the law. If l­awyers and notaires calculate this way, it is mainly b­ ecause they are trying to build a consensus to protect ­family relations. Next, in Chapter 5, we show the central role of taxation in producing this “­family peace,” which can take very dif­fer­ent forms depending on class background but is usually unfavorable to ­women.

5 Tax Avoidance and ­Family Peace at the Expense of ­Women

I desire that the bare owner­ship of my building on rue Sainte-­ Hélène in Lyon be attributed to my eldest son, Jean-­Pierre, to account for his having made all the improvements to this building, and that he be granted the longest delay pos­si­ble to allow him to respond should he owe compensation to some of his b­ rothers or ­sisters. . . . ​I hope that you can share what I’m leaving to you as equitably as pos­si­ble and continue to get along so well, as I have had the joy of seeing you help each other and love each other. I loved you all from the same heart and embrace you one last time. Dad.1

Sibylle received a copy of this document in November 2007. It was Raymond Dufournel’s w ­ ill, and was sent by his youn­gest son, Antoine, who was in his forties and a public urban planner in the Lyon metropolitan area. His ­father had just died, leaving a substantial real estate and financial inheritance estimated in excess of one million euros to his seven ­children from three dif­fer­ent relationships. But nothing was g­ oing as planned in the w ­ ill, which had been written fifteen years ­earlier. Antoine Dufournel was devastated by this conflictual succession that put him at odds with his (half-) ­brothers and ­sisters. His internet research led him to a special issue of the anthropology journal Terrain, on money in the f­amily. ­A fter reading

133

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Sibylle’s article describing the distribution of the Pilon ­family’s succession (the ­family of bakers discussed in previous chapters),2 he was astonished at how peacefully this succession seemed to have gone and wanted Sibylle’s opinion on his own ­family’s situation. Antoine Dufournel agreed to three recorded interviews between 2008 and 2018. He also sent Sibylle all the notarial documents concerning his ­father’s estate as well as a significant body of digital and postal correspondence with his ­mother and siblings. The particulars of this especially conflictual succession ­were fi­nally de­cided in a ruling by the f­ amily court judge in December 2013. This is rare, as only 5 ­percent of successions are settled in court. Pre­sen­ta­tion of this exceptional case reveals the conditions ­under which the secrecy of notarial offices usually guarantees ­family peace. Relatives with divergent interests often find common ground when considering how to pay as ­little tax as pos­si­ble, and they do this ­behind the closed doors of l­egal professionals’ offices rather than in court. A recent study has shown that levies on gifts and inheritance are some of the least popu­lar taxes in France, regardless of the social position or assets of surveyed ­people; they are also some of the least understood and most overestimated.3 A power­ful force for unity in propertied families, tax optimization in succession as well as divorce has consequences for inequalities within the f­ amily. ­Family peace negotiated in the shadow of both the law and the tax administration ­favors the wealthier relatives and often occurs at the expense of ­women.

An Uncooperative Son Raymond Dufournel was born in 1911. He inherited seven buildings in greater Lyon when he was 27. Although he did build several businesses over his lifetime (restaurants, furniture manufacturing, and antiques), he basically lived off of his private income. According to his c­ hildren, he was not very good at managing his inheritance, but he managed to stay wealthy. His declaration of succession mentions assets estimated at 1.2 million euros, composed of several savings accounts, land, and, most significantly, sizable real estate holdings. In addition to a distinguished town­house on rue Sainte-­Hélène in the heart of the historic center of Lyon, Raymond also had a ­house in Nuits-­Saint-­Georges (Burgundy), where he spent his last years with his third wife, and several investment properties on the outskirts of Lyon.



Tax Avoidance and Family Peace  135

As said, the succession concerned seven ­children from three marriages. From his first marriage Raymond had three sons and a ­daughter between 1939 and 1944: Jean-­Pierre, the eldest, who earned a doctorate in biology and became a research engineer at the French national center for scientific research; François, a technician who started an electronic maintenance business; Roland, a certified public accountant; and Claudine, who has no educational attainments and became a custodian at a c­ hildren’s home. From his second, very short marriage came Colette, who became a counselor at the national unemployment office. Raymond Dufournel married for the third time in 1955. His last wife, Yvonne, was a social worker, and they had two ­children: their ­daughter Dominique, born in 1959, became a commercial translator in Alsace, and our volunteer in­for­mant, Antoine, was born in 1964. The conflict over Raymond’s estate that broke out ­after his death was mainly between the eldest son and the youn­gest, who sparred with formal letters and emails. In contrast, the ­sisters and the other ­brothers barely participated in the exchange, or only played a mediating role. Jean-­Pierre was the only child to be singled out for a preferential attribution of property in the ­will. Raymond Dufournel wanted to give him the building on rue Sainte-­Hélène, where Jean-­Pierre had lived for ­free for nearly twenty years. With this wish, the f­ ather assigned a par­tic­u­lar place to his eldest son among his descendants: he would be the ­bearer of the lineage’s social status. However, a few months prior to Raymond’s passing, in April 2007, the building had been sold. The ­will, which moreover did not conform with the Civil Code, became totally inapplicable. Roland, the third son and an accountant, was the one who handled this sale as his ­father’s guardian. The building’s buyer w ­ asn’t just anyone: it was Jean-­ Pierre’s eldest son. The jewel among the f­amily’s assets—­the structuring asset of the estate around which the succession was configured—­had thus been passed on to the most legitimate heir of the lineage—­the eldest son of the eldest son. As for Antoine Dufournel, in 2001 and 2006 he received two buildings in Villeurbanne, a suburb of Lyon, as formal gifts. The youn­gest son undertook major renovations to make them into rental properties, benefiting from significant public subsidies that he knew all about thanks to his work in a city hall. However, ­because they had been ­simple gifts, the holdings had to be appraised for their current value on the day of succession, and in a few short years t­hese values had increased significantly. When Antoine

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had received the first building, worth 54,000 euros, in 2001, he had prudently requested that it be given as an inter vivos distribution, meaning that his siblings would have gotten gifts of the same value, and the building and t­ hese distributions to other heirs would not have been included in the final estate calculations. But Antoine’s ­father and siblings had refused his farsighted request, and six years ­later the building was estimated at 100,000 euros, and the rule of equal distribution among inheriting c­ hildren required that all of siblings receive equivalent values in the succession. At the time of the succession, paying compensation for the s­ imple gift of the rental properties in Villeurbanne seemed deeply unfair to Antoine, who felt as if his attentive care for and development of ­these real estate assets was mainly to the advantage of his (half-) siblings. He demanded that his eldest b­ rother, Jean-­Pierre, collate his in-­kind benefits to the estate: a­ fter all, he had resided at the h ­ ouse on rue Sainte-­Hélène, with a garden of over 100 square meters (about 1,000 square feet), in the city center, from 1961 to 1989. If Jean-­Pierre’s residency and “improvements to this building” ­were presented in the ­will as a contribution to the preservation of ­family real estate holdings, why ­shouldn’t the same be true for the work Antoine did in the investment properties that he had received? Jean-­Pierre reacted forcefully to this request, categorically refusing to consider his occupation of the building on rue Sainte-­Hélène as a benefit that could be collated to the estate. To his thinking, this f­ree and much-­deserved housing was the only help his ­father had ever given him, since he had neglected his ­earlier ­children in ­favor of his last wife and their new ­family. A month before his ­father’s death, Jean-­Pierre wrote a letter to all his siblings: While I was making an effort so that our f­ather could devote more money to o­ thers, one day he announced the f­ uture birth of Dominique [Antoine’s elder s­ister] (he was having a new child even though he ­couldn’t even ensure the proper subsistence of the “existing ones”). I became violently angry, and I spent two or three years without speaking to him. ­B ecause of the existence of my ­brothers and s­isters, ­because of the incapacity of our ­father to develop the capital that he inherited, and thanks to my own work, I was a scholarship student with full financial support from the State for thirteen years (of which I am proud and for which I am grateful).



Tax Avoidance and Family Peace  137

Raymond Dufournel’s succession revived major tensions latent between the siblings of multiple marriages. This conflict does not follow the classic model where the ­children of first marriages face off against the ­children of the last marriage and their m ­ other; it is Antoine alone in opposition to all other heirs, including his m ­ other and ­sister. To understand this specific configuration, we have to dig into a new aspect of f­ amily wealth arrangements: their fiscal dimension.

Taxing Gifts and Estates Since the 1970s t­ here has been an observable decline in inheritance taxation in most countries, including the United States, where it has been a significant f­actor in ensuring equal opportunity and democracy.4 Some countries have even de­cided to abolish it entirely: Canada did so in 1972, Australia in 1984, and several countries in Eu­rope (Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and Austria) in the 2000s. Although France has maintained the princi­ple of progressive taxation on gifts and inheritance, since the 2000s it has seen a distinct decline in the inheritance tax burden associated with the value of successions, due to several recently added deductions and exemptions.5 In France, it is each gift and inherited asset over a certain value that is taxed, rather than the entire estate (as is the case in the United States). In practice this means heavi­ly limiting the princi­ple of the progressivity of the system, ­because ­there is no view of all assets transmitted or received by individuals over a lifetime: all one needs to do is anticipate one’s succession by pacing inter vivos gifts to avoid taxation. Furthermore, ever since the Civil Code was established, succession rights have varied considerably according to the identity of the heir, favoring direct-­line transfer from parents to ­children. In the 1950s Prime Minister Antoine Pinay created a number of deductions favoring ­children, making sizable tax-­exempt transfers pos­si­ble. In contrast, in the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the tax burden steadily increased.6 The trend flipped again in the 2000s. As soon as the right-­wing conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he greatly expanded the possibilities for deductions and exemption mea­sures favoring inter vivos giving. The deduction for gifts and inheritance in the direct line, which was previously set at 50,000 euros per child e­ very ten years, was tripled to 150,000 euros e­ very six years. Since François Hollande (a member of the Socialist Party) became president in

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2012, it has been 100,000 euros e­ very 15 years, with an additional possibility of untaxed “­family gifts of sums of money” of up to 30,000 euros per child or grand­child, also ­every 15 years. Beyond that, c­ hildren’s inheritance is taxed on a progressive scale of 5 ­percent to 45 ­percent. Fifteen ­percent of successions are taxed ­today, which is half as many as in 2004.7 As elsewhere in the world, ­t hese fiscal reforms advantage the wealthiest.8 They mainly concern the highest 20 ­percent of successions, especially ­those over one million euros.9 Moreover, some economic assets enjoy additional exemptions. This is the case for life insurance, a very successful savings product judging by the fact that it represents 37 ­percent of the financial h ­ ouse­hold wealth and 23 ­percent of all assets transmitted upon 10 death. Professional assets—­the epitome of property that “must be kept,” and, as ­we’ve seen, preferentially transmitted to sons—­benefit from a particularly advantageous regime since 2003. They are exempt from estate taxes on up to 75 ­percent of their value, provided that the heir conserves his or her shares in the business for at least four years.11 Inheritance taxation thus ­favors the transfer of diversified assets, especially t­ hose composed of professional property, and whose ­owners possess the economic but also cultural resources necessary to spread out the pro­cess over time.

Diverging Fiscal Interests Let’s go back to the conflictual Dufournel succession. ­A fter deciding not to contest the high appraisal of the real estate he’d received, Antoine sought the counsel of a specialized ­lawyer, a former notaire. The latter wrote him the following on January 28, 2008: “I advise you to request that [the ­free housing enjoyed by Jean-­Pierre] be collated to the estate—­per law—­and arrange for estimates of the benefit he received before making a proposal yourself. This is also a notaire’s role in the declaration of a succession, u ­ nder the oversight of the tax administration, which, in the case of an adjustment, would certainly have a maximalist attitude; which would be, by the way, in your interest.” Two months l­ater Antoine sent a registered letter to the notaire in charge of the succession, entitled “Reservations and dissent regarding the notice of closure of the inventory.” In it he cata­logued all of the “manual gifts” (material or financial gifts given directly to an heir by a living donor) and “indirect benefits” enjoyed by his siblings, chiefly his eldest ­brother.



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This initiative was poorly received by his ­brothers and ­sisters. Their collective strategy at the time consisted of trying to work t­hings out without any ­legal help, declaring a minimum of the in-­kind benefits and informal gifts they had received in order to reduce estate taxes. When Antoine suggested a meeting with the notaire to discuss ­these issues, his ­brother Roland responded cautiously (letter of May 7, 2008): “We do not see the use of a meeting with the notaire at this stage of our discussion, ­because she neither knows nor masters any of our own par­ameters.” Antoine wrote back on May 13: “I see that y­ ou do not plan to follow professional and objective recommendations, but rather to ‘­settle accounts within the ­family.’ ” The strategy suggested by Antoine’s l­awyer proved in­effec­tive. In late 2008, the siblings and the notaire overseeing the estate agreed on a minimalist inventory. The building on rue Sainte-­Hélène, already sold to Jean-­ Pierre’s son, was not declared. The informal distribution of the proceeds of the sale among Raymond’s c­ hildren, which occurred before his death, was only partially formalized. The amounts of the manual gifts w ­ ere largely under-­declared so as to remain u ­ nder the tax threshold. All heirs but Antoine agreed on this arrangement, which allowed the structuring asset of the estate to remain in the hands of the line’s most legitimate heir while procuring a fiscal advantage for the ­others. Antoine’s list of “indirect benefits” was not counted. If he was not won over by this strategy of tax optimization, it was ­because it ­didn’t benefit him: he had already paid the inheritance taxes on the buildings in Villeurbanne at the time of the gift. By opposing the united front of his siblings and m ­ other, Antoine Dufournel broke the consensus necessary to settling the succession in a notarial office. His siblings ultimately went to court to compel the partition drafted by the notaire and demanded damages and interest from Antoine. In the elapsed time between the notaire’s proposal of a partition in November 2011, the filing of the heirs’ request in May 2012, and the ruling in December 2013, several reforms of inheritance law went into effect, challenging the tax optimization calculations that had led to the drafting of the partition. The other heirs thus requested that the court “sentence Mister Antoine Dufournel to pay the supplementary taxes of 12,913 euros,” but their demand was rejected. Avoiding taxes is a power­f ul ­family tie.12 Taxation is omnipresent in ­family wealth arrangements, and l­egal professionals have fully incorporated fiscal stakes into their work. Notaires use the consensus over the objective

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of tax optimization to foster consensus over the entire succession, meaning the distribution of the estate among heirs. The Dufournel case raises two questions about such practices. The first concerns how l­egal professionals relate to the tax administration, and the second, what effects this relationship might have on the wealth-­transfer options in the richest families, and on wealth inequalities between men and w ­ omen.

The Notaire’s Paradox: Collecting and Minimizing Taxes Notaires have an ambiguous relationship with taxation, to say the least. The website for the High Council of Notaires reminds its readers that eight-­ tenths of what are commonly called “notarial fees” consist in fact of taxes that are passed on to the public trea­sury, one-­tenth goes t­oward vari­ous fees the notaire pays on the client’s behalf, and only the remaining tenth is remuneration for the notaire’s ­actual ser­vices.13 As agents of the state, notaires are effectively charged with gathering taxes, and ­because part of their remuneration is proportional to the value of the possessions cited in the ­legal documents they prepare, they have no obvious interest in underestimating them. But in practice, a significant proportion of their advising activity consists of tax optimization for their wealthiest clientele. Notaires’ advisory brochures are full of recommendations for minimizing inheritance taxes. For example, in “The Main Steps of Succession,” dated February 2014 and found in a major Pa­ri­sian office, we read the following advice: “When the beneficiaries of life insurance policies are also heirs, it is relevant to ­settle the two transfers in parallel. The surviving spouse is exempt from inheritance tax ­today. It thus might be wise to make c­ hildren the beneficiaries of life insurance policies, which are taxed at a lower rate [as revenue] and exempt [from the inheritance tax], and to give the surviving spouse more of the rest of the inheritance, upon which he ­will not pay taxes.” Notaires’ publications never suggest underestimating one’s property in black and white, of course. To the contrary, the same pamphlet even advised against it: “Any underestimation may lead to a tax adjustment for the estate and gift tax. In addition, in case of resale of the property the value-­ added tax ­will be calculated according to the value declared at the time of succession.” This advice is a good summation of the profession’s ambiguous position relative to taxes. Situating themselves more on their clients’ side



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than the tax administration’s, notaires do not formally prevent their clients from underestimating property or not declaring a manual gift, but they do inform them of the risk of a costly tax adjustment. For that m ­ atter, by reminding clients that it is wise to reduce the value-­added tax, notaires use another tax optimization argument to advise against underestimation in instances where the property w ­ ill be sold. This equivocal position on taxes, which comes through so clearly in estate planning and distribution, is also found in advice on the liquidation of conjugal property, although this time with ­lawyers.

Tax Obligations: A Class-­Based Confidentiality Agreement ­ ere is nothing like observing professional meetings between notaires and Th ­lawyers for seeing which practices are consensual and which, on the borderline of legality, lead to divergent interpretations. Taxation of divorces falls ­under the second category. In a liquidation of marital property, assets the spouses own jointly are subject to partitioning taxes at 2.5 ­percent of their value. However, this tax only applies if the partition requires a notarial document, as is the case when the ­couple owns real estate. In December 2014 our colleagues Gabrielle Schutz and Hélène Steinmetz attended a training session sponsored by the Paris Bar devoted to “wealth management and taxation issues in family-­law negotiations,” which was run by Sophie Delalande, a ­lawyer who promotes amicable ways of settling separations. One of the speakers was a Pa­ri­sian notaire, Christelle Andreux, who informed the hundred or so ­lawyers in attendance of the possibilities that uncontested divorce (“divorce by mutual consent”) offers for avoiding partitioning taxes, so long as the real estate is sold before the official proceedings. The following account is from the field notes: Another speaker, a tax l­awyer, asks her directly: “Should I or s­ houldn’t I hide it from the notaire that we are splitting the proceeds from the sale [of property liquidated before the official divorce]?” “You must inform the notaire of the verbal partition,” Christelle Andreux replies immediately, “­because notaires are ­there to help individuals, advise them, so you ­mustn’t hide anything from them. Before being a tax agent, the notaire is also counsel to the parties.

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The cause w ­ ill not be mentioned in the decree nor w ­ ill it be figured into the partition.” Sophie Delalande, also at the speakers’ ­table, adds: “You need a relationship of trust with the notaire. One of our recent clients, who had a considerable net worth . . . ​we saw that discussion was pos­si­ble. Obviously in this case you ­don’t refer it to a judge, you invite the clients to dispose of that which they wish to dispose of prior to the proceedings. And I agree with you, t­ here is no written trace between ­lawyers or clients mentioning that!” A ­ woman in the audience asks: “Not even confidential writings?” Sophie Delalande responds: “If it’s a case with 10.5 million euros in assets, no! Seriously, the common interest is perfectly obvious!” A man in attendance takes the microphone: “I’m a tax ­lawyer, and what you advise [leaving no written trace] seems overly cautious, it seems extremely conservative to me. It’s not even discussed in other areas of fiscal law!” In a questioning tone, another attendee points out to the notaire: “But, you earn less?,” meaning that in this case the notaire would be paid only for the property transfer, but not the partition. “But I gain in clients!” Christelle Andreux replies. A ­woman in the audience indicates: “But ­there are notaires who ­don’t agree with that at all,” to which Sophie Delalande shoots back, “Yes, but you can choose your notaire!” ­Later, another female l­awyer in attendance speaks up: “I’ve already had cases of [tax] adjustments. I d ­ on’t write it in at all, even for a small community property or a small indivision. But it raises prob­lems of responsibility. We know that the ­family court judges in Paris have a tendency, when they have a lingering doubt, to pass it on to the tax administration, which needs money. So, I do it, but I am extremely circumspect and extremely troubled by it. I ­don’t know how to deal with it.” Sophie Delalande explains: in order to be sure that the tax administration does not contest it, “a few months need to pass” between the sale of the real estate and the initiation of the divorce.



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A man speaks up: “I do them ­every month, that kind of operations. I inform the client. To me it’s a rather dubious position, it’s borderline. I make him sign a paper saying that I informed him of the tax administration’s position. And I keep the paper.”

This discussion reveals both how distant t­ hese ­legal professionals are from the tax administration and how diverse their practices are. In the name of the fiscal interests of their clients, some l­awyers and notaires exercise par­tic­u­lar discretion to not mention the sale of property that was jointly owned by a c­ ouple. ­There are several degrees of confidentiality, ranging from the secrecy of verbal exchange in the confines of a ­legal office to formally written agreements between notaires and l­awyers, or between them and their clients. Notaires and ­lawyers do not all exercise this specific discretion vis-­à-­vis the tax administration in the same way, or to the benefit of the same clients. As the l­awyer Sophie Delalande stressed in the observed training session, a net worth of 10.5 million euros involves additional ser­vices and precautions. One of the power­ful roots of the upper classes’ “domestication of fiscal constraint” is found h ­ ere.14 Not only can they soften fiscal rules and multiply niches and exemptions, but they also have increasing leeway for underestimating or even hiding their wealth. The richest families are supported by many professionals (­lawyers, notaires, accountants, bankers, wealth man­ag­ers) who use the law to their advantage. Thanks to their work, underestimation and dissimulation are stamped with the seal of good economic sense and professionalism instead of being stigmatized as deviant practices.15 In other circumstances, especially when the clientele is less wealthy, notaires may prefer the immediate profit of partitioning fees, or value the re­spect of fiscal law, over maintaining the loyalty of a wealthy clientele. Some l­awyers and notaires are wary of the risk of a tax adjustment; o­ thers suggest that their clients knowingly take their chances. Jérôme Poly, a notaire who practices in a semirural town in the western French region of Pays de la Loire, is in the first category. His office contrasts starkly with the luxury of Pa­ri­sian offices. It is located in a prefabricated building facing a supermarket parking lot, although his personal office is by far the poshest part of the firm, furnished in white plastic of con­temporary design. When we met, Jérôme Poly was 38 and had been a

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partner in this firm for five years. The other two partners, who ­were approaching retirement, let him develop a clientele of first-­time homeowners moving into the nearby suburban housing developments: “That’s what I like, that we can grow old together, me and my l­ittle clients.” This diminutive way of describing his clients corresponds to the social gap between this young notaire from the local bourgeoisie (his ­father was an auctioneer, his m ­ other an executive secretary) and his more ­humble clientele. “The social fabric ­here i­sn’t very rich,” he said. In the recorded interview he used the word “cunning” in describing a client who, practically unbeknownst to the notaire, used an advanced tax optimization technique (the same one presented by the notaire Christelle Andreux at the Paris training session). The following sums up his account. A client came to the office and indicated that he and his wife, who w ­ ere in the pro­cess of an uncontested divorce, jointly owned a h ­ ouse in which he still resided. Jérôme Poly provided him with an estimate of the notarial fees (including partitioning taxes) associated with the liquidation of this jointly owned property. A few weeks l­ater the client returned, a­ fter having seen another notaire who had quoted him a much higher fee. Jérôme Poly said he first feigned surprise—­“­There must be a prob­lem. If Notaire X gave you a higher fee than I did, that ­doesn’t make sense b­ ecause ­we’re on a set rate. It’s the government, it’s the same everywhere. So that’s not pos­si­ble, something’s wrong. You d ­ idn’t forget to tell me something, by any chance?” In fact, in the interval the other notaire (“she’s a good friend”) called Jérôme Poly to tell him that one of his clients had come to see her, and that ­she’d sent him back. She explained that the c­ ouple also had significant sums in their bank accounts from the sale of another jointly owned property. Jérôme Poly concluded, “I distrust him, greatly. B ­ ecause the prob­lem is that he’s blinded by this stinginess, he’s g­ oing to take risks, the jackass. You know that partitioning taxes are based on joint net assets. If we neglect to declare assets and the tax administration realizes it, who’ll get hit with the adjustment? He ­will. And who ­will be held responsible? I ­will.” We are far indeed from the mutually trusting relationship between wealthy Pa­ri­sian clients and their notaires to the detriment of the tax administration that was vaunted by Christelle Andreux. To the contrary, this is a situation of mutual distrust between the client, who ­doesn’t tell the notaire every­thing, and the notaire, who is wary of his “cunning” client.



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The strategy of building client loyalty by sheltering them from the tax administration and maximally reducing taxation of their assets pays off variably depending on the type of clientele. It is especially worthwhile when the clients have frequent need of a notaire’s ser­vices, which compensates for the losses due to the undervaluation of the assets that serve as the basis for calculating the notaire’s revenue. In other words, it is mainly worth the effort for notaires and l­awyers who want and are able to build up a clientele with significant and diversified assets (an ability that depends especially on the location of their office). “If you want good advice, you ­shouldn’t hide anything from your notaire. You can hide t­ hings from the tax inspector, but not from your notaire! Notaires know all the f­amily secrets, they know all the bastards of the [French] Republic,” the Secretary General of the Paris notarial school declared to Sibylle. Th ­ ere is nothing random in the fact that he opposes the notaire to the tax inspector. Beyond the protection of their clients’ privacy, brandishing notaire–­client privilege makes it pos­si­ble to keep the state and the tax administration at bay. With a clientele of small property ­owners, notaires use this guarantee of confidentiality to convince their clients to tell them absolutely every­thing, thus protecting themselves from any blame by the tax administration. This secrecy is also highlighted to build loyalty in a more regular and wealthier clientele by offering them sophisticated tax optimization tools. The tax shield designed b­ ehind the closed doors of l­egal offices mostly advantages the wealthiest clients, and more specifically, as we s­ hall see, men.

Avoiding Taxes: Do We All Agree? In November 2014, for the second time in six months, Valérie Parienly heads to see her l­awyer who works in a chic office just off the Champs Elysées in Paris. Carole Jouve is one of ­t hose l­awyers who have no compunctions about helping their clients from the grande bourgeoisie minimize the tax burden on their fortunes. As we saw in Chapter 3, Carole Jouve studied business and tax law, and mostly advises business o­ wners sent by friends who are certified public accountants or by her husband, also a business l­awyer. Her office is in a beautiful nineteenth-­century building with a ­grand entranceway and lovely courtyard. “If I ­were at Bastille or Charonne [i.e., in a less affluent neighborhood], clients w ­ ouldn’t

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come to see me. And that’s stupid, completely stupid! But that’s how it is,” she concedes. “­There are some t­ hings that pique my curiosity,” Valérie Parienly announces as she sets foot in the ­lawyer’s office. The ­women, both in their mid-­forties and wearing the same Pa­ri­sian uniform (slim jeans, boots with heels, belted jackets, and subdued jewelry), know each other well: “She’s the friend of ­really good friends who I go out with all the time,” Carole Jouve told us a­ fter the appointment. Her elbow on the l­awyer’s desk, head propped on her hand, the client is trying to understand the financial implications of the separation with her husband. He left the conjugal home a year previously, first “to take a break” but then with the intention of divorcing her. Valérie is wondering about her husband’s recent proposal to change the status of their primary residence—­a ­house worth 1.5 million euros where she lives with her eldest ­daughter, a high school student—­from an indivision (50 / 50) to a “civil real estate com­pany” (société civile immobilière), a specific form of joint real estate owner­ship between ­family members intended to facilitate real-­estate transfer to c­ hildren. Her husband used to be the financial director of an international com­ pany with a major income, somewhere from 20,000 to 30,000 euros a month—­she ­isn’t sure. He recently left this salaried job to start a business as an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant. Valérie does not know what he negotiated in severance pay from his com­pany. Since their separation she herself has resumed working as a freelance beauty journalist, bringing in about 1,500 euros a month; this makes her protest, “I have no income!” (although hers is in fact the average monthly income in France). Her husband is asking to delay filing for divorce, for tax reasons. He spoke to her of the partitioning taxes the c­ ouple would have to pay if they ­were to divorce before having liquidated their property. She is up in arms about this tax herself: “I recover 500,000 euros [from the sale of their ­house; only 1 million of its purchase price had already been paid off], which lets me get new housing. Am I ­going to have to pay 2.5 ­percent? In that case it’s ­going to be tight to get housing!” Her l­awyer Carole Jouve explains to her that entering into a “civil real estate com­pany” before the divorce would not be to her advantage. So long as the c­ ouple is married and jointly owns the ­house (in an indivision of equal shares), the husband’s payment of the loan is a contribution to the costs of the marriage that, in the eyes of the law, is calculated according to the spouses’ respective abilities to pay. In a



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“civil real estate com­pany,” each payment would increase the husband’s capital but not that of the wife. “He’s got nerve!” the l­ awyer remarks. She also warns her client of the risk of a tax adjustment due to the liquidation of the indivision prior to initiating divorce proceedings, for the sole purpose of avoiding partitioning taxes. Valérie Parienly indicates that her husband also suggested giving shares of this proposed “real estate com­pany” to their two d ­ aughters (100,000 euros to each) and highlighted the tax advantages entailed. Carole warns her client that her husband is in fact organizing his impoverishment—by leaving his job and starting his own business and then coming up with this plan to pass assets on to their d ­ aughters. Such a scheme would minimize the alimony owed to his ex-­wife ­because of the wealth disparity resulting from their divorce. Indeed, Valérie Parienly meets all the criteria for significant alimony: she has been married for more than twenty years, s­ topped working to take care of the ­children, and followed her husband’s ­career to the United States. Her husband earned at least twenty times more than she did, and ­because they w ­ ere married ­under the regime of the separation of assets, Valérie can only claim her share of the residence at the end of the marriage. This tactic is in line with vari­ous tax optimization strategies implemented while they w ­ ere together: underestimation of net worth to escape the wealth tax, early transfers to the ­children to lower inheritance taxes and the wealth tax. Carole warns her client: “Afterward, Madam w ­ ill have nothing left. The girls w ­ ill get by [they do not need their inheritance right away]! Men often think like that, especially when they have to pay alimony.” However, the ­lawyer and her client are also sensitive to minimizing taxes. This interest, apparently shared by the adversarial party, ends up muddying the ­lawyer’s defensive strategy. Several times Carole Jouve acknowledges the under­lying opposition between tax optimization techniques and her client’s interests, or between men’s interest (“Men often think like that”) and ­women’s. Already caving in to the logic of tax optimization, Carole Jouve fi­nally offers to consult with a tax ­lawyer to study the suggestion of the civil real estate com­pany, and says she w ­ ill keep her client posted. The negotiated settlement of the economic consequences of separations in ­lawyers’ and notaires’ offices emerges from a guarded attitude ­toward taxes that is not gender-­neutral. In the vast majority of wealthier divorced ­couples, it is the man who owes alimony. In this regard, they are thus the ones to benefit the most from strategies underestimating the c­ ouples’

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assets. Over the course of divorce proceedings, tax optimization strategies—­ proposed and legitimated by l­egal professionals—­thus converge with the interests of men.

Fiscal Optimization Benefits Men’s Wealth The calculations done in the secrecy of l­egal offices are saturated with a relationship to taxes that is a feature of the higher strata of the propertied classes, described by Alexis Spire as the domestication of the tax administration: “Domesticating tax means appropriating it—­that is, understanding that the rule should always be interpreted in application to a par­tic­u­lar case, the issue being to use this margin of interpretation so that it coincides as closely as pos­si­ble with one’s own interests.”16 This concern is shared by ­lawyers, notaires, and their well-­off clientele. It is sometimes made explicit, as in the conversation between Carole Jouve and her client, but often it remains implicit, entangled in the accounting established in the confidentiality of ­legal offices. Céline and her colleague Aurore Koechlin ­were able to observe this concern with tax optimization and its effects on economic inequalities between men and ­women in a ­legal meeting in the Pays de la Loire in February 2014. Two local ­lawyers, Arnaud Thiercelin and Grâce Dupont-­ Bernard, had gotten the permission of their clients, Marc and Isabelle Cousin, for us to attend their second meeting in their collaborative divorce by mutual consent. The meeting had a specific objective: setting the alimony that Marc, head of a construction com­pany, would pay to Isabelle, a part-­time nurse, in accordance with provisional spousal support obligations ­until the divorce became official. In contested divorces, this support is determined by a judge in the first step of the procedure (known as the nonconciliation order). The collaborative procedure meeting we observed took place in Arnaud Thiercelin’s office, and lasted nearly three hours, with a secretary regularly bringing coffee and other beverages. To arrive at an agreement on the amount of the provisional spousal support, over the course of the meeting Grâce Dupont-­Bernard noted all of Isabelle and Marc Cousin’s monthly resources and expenses on an easel for all to see. A single line summed it all up: the available monthly income for each. The objective was to balance both sides of the bottom line. ­Table 5.1 reproduces the notes from the easel.



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­table 5.1. ​Preliminary calculations for setting the amount of provisional spousal support in collaborative law [Cousin case, February 2014, Pays de Loire] Resources

Expenses

Available

Him

Her

Income: 3,000 euros / month Dividends from business: 2,000 euros / month Dividends from real estate com­pany: 600 euros / month Rental income on individually owned property: 400 euros / month Rent from individually owned farm property: 50 euros / month Total monthly resources: 6,050 euros Income tax: 1,586 euros / month Residence tax, secondary home: 53 euros / month Land tax, secondary home: 55 euros / month Loan, secondary home: 834 euros / month Utilities, secondary home: 90 euros / month Insurance (boat, car, home): 44 euros / month Rent of apartment: 700 euros /  month Electricity: 61 euros / month Telephone: 30 euros / month

Income: 595 euros / month Dividends from real estate com­pany: 600 euros / month

2,597 euros / month

305.50 euros / month

Total monthly resources: 1,195 euros Insurance: 62.50 euros / month Supplementary health insurance: 50 euros / month Residence tax: 158 euros /  month Land tax: 183 euros / month Gas: 39 euros / month Electricity: 138 euros / month Tele­vi­sion tax: 133 euros / year (11 euros / month) Telephone: 50 euros / month ­Water: 19 euros / month Automotive loan: 170 euros /  month Furnace: 110 euros / year (9 euros / month) Total monthly expenses: 3,453 euros Total monthly expenses: 889.50 euros

Since the separation Isabelle Cousin had been living alone in the marital home, which she had inherited and thus belonged to her individually. She complained that the expenses of such a big ­house now fell to her alone, and she thought that she and her husband could both continue to live t­ here without difficulty. ­A fter a first round of negotiations, the husband agreed to take responsibility for the taxes on the ­house (158 euros a month for the

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residence tax plus 183 euros a month for land taxes), which changed the calculations of what was available: 646.50 euros for her and 2,256 euros for him. The ­lawyers suggested that a payment of 800 euros in spousal support would equalize the amount available to each (within a margin of 10 euros). Marc Cousin protested strongly, “­You’re ­really piling it on!” He thought it unfair that he should have the same available income as his wife when she only worked part-­time. The room was tense. Isabelle retorted: “We de­cided together that I would work part time, to not give any more to taxes, since we already gave so much. I’m not ­going to start working full-­ time at fifty-­five! That’s not pos­si­ble, not with all the accidents and physical prob­lems that I’ve had.” Marc insisted, “I have no prob­lem with the princi­ple of spousal support. What I d ­ on’t want is a perfect balance when she only works half-­time and me, full-­time.” He added, “I d ­ on’t understand why I’d be forced to cover the taxes on a h ­ ouse in which I have zero owner­ship and, on top of that, that I ­can’t even use.” Isabelle Cousin ultimately agreed to go back on the initial division of expenses and took charge of the taxes. Discussion of spousal support resumed. A consensus emerged on a sum of 1,000 euros a month. The ­lawyer Grâce Dupont-­Bernard had a decisive argument: “Mister Cousin, you are aware that it is fiscally advantageous for you [­because spousal support is deductible]. Madam, you w ­ ill have to declare 1,000 euros as additional taxable income [support must be declared by the recipient]. For you, sir, that comes to 1,597 euros available income, even a ­little more with the deduction. And for you, Madam, 1,305 euros available income, is that acceptable?” They both agreed. The l­awyers’ reasoning ­behind finding a “fair” level of spousal support is remarkable. It consists of balancing available incomes by subtracting the spouses’ respective expenses from their incomes, which corresponds to very dif­fer­ent living standards. Yes, Isabelle Cousin does keep use of the marital home. However, from his income Marc not only subtracts the rent of his primary residence, but also the expenses of a secondary home of which he has exclusive use and the insurance of his boat. ­These calculations fully follow the logic of classic income tax optimization, especially as it plays out for business ­owners: you subtract as many expenses as pos­si­ble from your income in order to reduce what is available, and the ensuing discussions then focus on that amount. In all t­ hese calculations, the tax argument recurs regularly: it is ­behind the wife’s part-­time employment, and it wins



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the husband’s agreement to pay higher spousal support, which he can deduct from his taxable income, in exchange for his wife continuing to pay expenses that he could not have deducted b­ ecause they ­were taxes. This is at the expense of Isabelle Cousin, who in the previous arrangement had higher available income (1,446 euros) and lower revenues to declare to the tax administration. This example provides a glimpse of how applying a mode of accounting crafted by the domestication of taxes leads to an outcome more favorable to men. ­Here, the social proximity of the l­ awyers and the husband—­all heads of their own businesses—­favors economic arrangements developed out of sight from the tax administration and which reinforce gender inequalities.

Subconscious Sexism: The Taxation of Child Support The taxation of child support in France does not help to reduce the economic inequalities between men and ­women following a separation—­quite the contrary. We just saw that Marc Cousin can deduct his provisional spousal support payments from his taxes, while Isabelle has to add them to her taxable income. The same goes for child support. In 97  ­percent of divorces where alimony is granted (which is only 20 ­percent of all divorces), it is paid by the man. Likewise, in 97 ­percent of cases it is the ­father who owes child support (which is paid for 68 ­percent of the ­children whose situations go to ­family court).17 Indeed, in seven of ten cases, the mother is granted child custody. She receives child support in 83 percent of cases. It is much less common in cases of shared physical custody (when expenses are also thought to be split in two) or when residence is with the f­ather (a situation often associated with a m ­ other’s economic insecurity, making her “impecunious”). For men and ­women in the ­middle and upper classes who pay income taxes, the taxation of child support thus f­ actors into economic in­equality between the genders. Separated ­women have to declare support as revenue and pay taxes on it, while the paying men deduct them from their taxable income. The reason ­behind this tax situation is a mystery: why should a separated ­father deduct his contributions to raising his child (their food, housing, other expenses) when this ­isn’t the case for ­fathers who live with their c­ hildren? Other choices have been made in other countries, but they are disregarded in France. In Canada, for example, child support has not been

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taxable for the recipient nor deductible for the payer since the 1990s, in the name of economic equality between the sexes but also in the interest of public finances. Thanks to progressive taxation and b­ ecause of income inequalities between men and ­women (­those [men] paying support are generally wealthier than ­those [­women] receiving it), the province of Quebec thus took in C$75 million more in taxes in 1995.18 Such tax neutrality of child support has never been considered in France. The feminist collective ­Family Abandonment–­Z ero Tolerance (Abandon de Famille–­Tolérance Zéro) has recently begun fighting for the cause. According to co-­founder Stéphanie Lamy, “­There is no reason that the debtor can obtain a tax deduction when the p ­ eople who receive [support], but are also responsible for the child, cannot—­and worse, have to declare the sums they receive. Child support is not income! ­Mothers take on the expenses of c­ hildren, ­fathers are supposed to reimburse their share.”19 This is an isolated position. Grounded in sexist bias, the taxation of child support is a gift from the French state to men of the ­middle and upper classes that accentuates economic equality with their former wives and partners.

Tax Havens and Working ­under the ­Table: How to Keep the Tax Administration and W ­ omen in the Dark At the pinnacle of the socioeconomic hierarchy, wealth belongs to men. ­Women are distinctly under-­represented among the very rich, CEOs, and even the professions and small business o­ wners. The higher the wealth, the more likely it is that it is managed exclusively by men. The sociologist Camille Herlin-­Giret describes the relationship that ­women in wealthy families have with their wealth as “property without appropriation.”20 Wives are often unaware of their ­house­hold’s economic situation or that of their husbands, whom they entrust with most financial administrative tasks, particularly income tax declarations. Valérie Parienly, whom we met e­ arlier in this chapter as she visited her l­awyer in Paris, is a striking example: she ­didn’t know exactly how much her husband earned, only that it was somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 euros a month. Wealth beyond a certain level is characterized by complexity. This is not by happenstance, but the result of the activities of a number of l­egal and financial experts—­wealth man­a g­ers, estate advisors, certified public accountants, notaires, tax l­awyers, and the like—­who “work on capital and



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make it work.”21 One of the main objectives of ­these guardians of fortunes is to protect wealth from the intrusion of the tax administration. The production of complexity is a strategy that toxic industries commonly use to keep outsiders in the dark. The history of sciences developed the concept of the production of ignorance to analyze the tobacco industry, to break from the opposition between active knowledge and passive ignorance, by emphasizing the work that is required to produce ignorance.22 It is also the strategy of professionals in the management of considerable wealth. Working on capital through the mounting of complex financial and business setups such as holding or interconnected companies produces the ignorance of the tax administration, and also of ­sisters and wives. A 2016 article in the New York Times Magazine offers a stunning example.23 Sarah Pursglove, the wife of the Finnish entrepreneur Robert Oesterlund, had the ­great luck of the Panama Papers scandal erupting during her divorce proceedings in Canada. She and her ­lawyers discovered that her husband had a fortune worth US$400 million, much more than the few million he claimed. Their in-­depth investigation in connection with the divorce led them to deconstruct the arcana of a financial empire composed of offshore companies, trusts in the Cook Islands, and shell corporations in the Bahamas and other tax havens worldwide. Of course, this kind of international-­scale financial engineering concerns only the greatest of fortunes. But as we have seen, many wives, d ­ aughters, and s­isters of businessmen, members of the professions, and even shop­ keep­ers and farmers may at the time of divorce or succession find themselves not knowing exactly what the f­ amily net worth is. When this happens, they have trou­ble asserting their rights over wealth that they can barely mea­sure or get acknowledged. Tax optimization, concealment, and sometimes outright fraud implemented by l­egal and financial management professionals block the l­egal compensation mechanisms serving w ­ omen, who are kept away from wealth management. However, the effectiveness of the production of ignorance in f­amily wealth arrangements depends on the degree of sophistication of the tools used to trick the tax administration. Sophie Carsalade is a ju­nior ­lawyer in a rather smart firm in a city in eastern France, where she is responsible for ­family cases. In an interview with Sibylle and our colleague Raphaëlle Salem, she told us of the divorce of a part-­time teacher (earning 800 euros / month) and her husband, a retired man­ag­er in a private com­pany (2,700 euros / month). Astonished by

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the high revenues declared in her client’s name on the ­couple’s tax returns, far indeed from the figures on her pay stubs, Sophie Carsalade first realized that the man was declaring the income that he was earning alongside his pension in the name of his wife. She then discovered that he owned eight rental properties for which he declared deductible expenses without providing any receipts. Lastly, she found out that ­after having obtained use of the marital home (“I can maintain this domicile, my wife ­can’t,” he had argued to the judge), he secretly put this “huge ­house with pool” up for rent for 1,300 euros / month while renting an apartment for himself. Th ­ ese ele­ments spurred the ­lawyer to start litigation procedures and request an expert accounting review, which she obtained. The man appealed, but the order for accounting expertise was upheld. The errors and inconsistencies in the husband’s case ­were all cracks in the wall of ignorance that he had tried to build to protect his wealth from taxes and his wife. Despite his significant revenue and real estate holdings, his economic capital was not big enough (and perhaps not old enough, or he lacked adequate socialization in the law) to ensure his place in the network of ­legal professionals likely to help him develop a perfectly consistent wealth and tax strategy. He was, moreover, clearly not represented by a leading light of the local Bar—­Sophie Carsalade attributed the initiative for his defense to the husband himself and mentioned his l­ awyer only once, without naming her, in the fifteen minutes it took to tell the story. Sophie Carsalade went on to say that had she been contacted to be his ­lawyer, she would have turned down such a client, who is ready to tell a string of lies and balks at providing any receipts. However, from a ­lawyer’s point of view, it also counts that he is solvent: at least he has a significant regular income—­his pension—­that is formally declared. Think back to Nathalie Mougins, Michèle Abitbol’s client we met in Chapter 3: She owned some professional and investment property, but with no formal income she ­couldn’t convince the l­awyer to take her case. The uncertainty over her economic capital worked against her in two ways, ­because Michèle Abitbol doubted both her solvency and her ability to be honest with her. In the working-­class fraction of the propertied classes, meddling with taxes creates distrust rather than complicity with ­legal professionals. In the working classes, when assets are ­limited to owner­ship of a home and vehicles (or not even that), and when income from work approaches the tax threshold, the main workaround for avoiding taxes is working ­under



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the ­table. By “working ­under the ­table” we do not mean domestic labor (which is not paid and thus not taxed) or under­ground work that cannot be declared ­because it is illegal (like sex, stolen goods or drug trafficking), but instead unreported work—­any activity that could be formally paid work, subject to income and social security taxes, but is not declared.24 Working ­under the ­table includes a wide variety of situations, such as jobs hidden by small business ­owners, jobs that an employer did not declare, a share of worked hours that an employee ­didn’t report, or cash work in the informal sector. L ­ egal professionals whose clientele is at least partly in the working classes or small business o­ wners are obviously aware of ­these strategies and cannot ignore them. The very real challenge is thus to mount a consistent case that can be presented to the ­family court judge without embarrassing the client or the l­awyer in court. Two of our colleagues, Benjamin Faure and Hélène Steinmetz, attended a court hearing in metropolitan Paris, wherein a divorced ­father, a janitor, requested a reduction of his child-­support payment of 180 euros for his four ­children. Like his ex-­wife, a ­house­keeper on parental leave, he was born in Egypt. They had been married in France, where the ­children ­were born, and they received l­egal aid. The man’s ­lawyer provided no less than thirty-­ eight pieces of evidence demonstrating the decline in his income, saying one of his employers had forced him to quit and so he earned only 325 euros a month plus 200 euros in welfare (Active Solidarity Income). The ex-­wife’s ­lawyer was quick to plant the seeds of doubt: “I’m ­going to ask a question, and I fear the worst. The gentleman tells us, ‘I signed a resignation letter.’ Where is the l­ abor court case? Why did the gentleman dare to quit his job? You see what I mean.” She rapidly pointed out the existence of multiple bank accounts and deposits by check in the man’s bank statements that corroborated her client’s hypothesis that her ex-­husband was moonlighting as a painter for private individuals. For minority members of the working classes, the very existence of assets beyond a basic bank account makes them deviant. In such a case, being the instigator of the proceedings and having a l­ awyer become disadvantages, ­because the ­lawyer cannot go to court without submitting evidence that ­will also undermine his client’s case. At the top and bottom of the social ladder, albeit in dif­fer­ent forms, working around taxes is generally a power­ful unifier of divergent ­family interests, that l­egal professionals know how to manipulate to arrive at a

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consensus over f­ amily wealth arrangements. This collective interest in tax optimization is all the more effective that it need not always be explicit. In the name of ­family peace in successions and according to the model of the “good negotiated divorce,” it is incorporated into the accounting done in ­legal offices, where it becomes naturalized.25 This collective interest is much closer to the interests of men than to those of ­women, however, and the ­family peace that is fostered in the shadow of tax law often comes at a cost for ­women. This kind of consensus develops even more readily in negotiated divorces and successions when the wives and s­isters have few financial and informational resources for understanding and defending their own interests. This is especially so in propertied families where ­women are left out of wealth management and have not appropriated property. This specific kind of relationship to property owner­ship has hard cash consequences at the time of divorce or succession: it leads w ­ omen, even w ­ omen in wealthy families, to renounce certain owner­ship rights. When the assets are too ­limited and clients’ tax avoidance strategies (like working u ­ nder the ­table) are more indicative of a distanced relationship to legality than an instrumental relationship to the law, professionals have a harder time building collective interest at the expense of the tax administration. In this case, divorces and separations usually end up being settled in court. Chapters 6 and 7 ­will accordingly shift our attention to the courts, focusing on the separation of cohabiting ­couples, when the economic inequalities between men and ­women are exposed for all to see.

6 Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth In­equality?

O

ver coffee in january 2015, a colleague introduced Sibylle to a friend who was a f­amily court judge in Paris and might be able to help us negotiate access to ­legal rec­ords. They hit it off well, as all three ­were in their late thirties, the two men had gone to school together for a time, and all w ­ ere civil servants who had reached their positions through competitive examinations ­after successfully completing a long education. During this long conversation the judge mentioned the parties held by a widely known f­ amily ­lawyer in Paris. Judges of the Paris ­family court are regularly invited to society events like this. The judge puckishly recounted that the last party was held to celebrate the ­lawyer’s adoption of a new Chihuahua, Chanel, and they all laughed, undoubtedly ­because they related to money differently than did this l­awyer and many of her peers. We found that many judges and clerks ­were ambivalent about economic wealth, especially ­those at the ­family and appeals courts of Paris; this setting puts them in contact with star l­awyers and their clients, some of whom are famous politicians or performers with exceptional incomes and estates. In France, three out of four f­ amily court judges are w ­ omen, as are nine out of ten clerks. All are civil servants working on a monthly salary that bears no relation to the wealth of the ­people passing through their court. French f­amily court judges can be described as “street-­level bureaucrats,” bearing a heavy caseload in a frontline position.1 Most of them entered the 157

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National School of Magistrates (École Nationale de la Magistrature) right ­after gradu­ate school, before the age of 30, and very few of them worked as a l­awyer before becoming a judge. F ­ amily court judges have a low to middling position in the judiciary, far from its elite. As in other countries of continental Eu­rope in the civil-­law tradition, the courts are run as a bureaucracy, judges preside over hearings, and ­there is less reliance on case law than in common-­law countries. Although judgeships are in the top 25 ­percent of jobs that pay the best during early c­ areer in France, and in the top 10 ­percent a­ fter a de­c ade in the profession, French ­family court judges’ wages and social standing are significantly lower when compared to ­those of their peers in common-­law countries.2 Furthermore, ­because the French court system is centralized and operates on the national scale, judges’ civil-­service ­careers move with variable speed up a national hierarchy. As is true for most highly-­placed governmental employees, this advancement comes at the cost of regular geo­graph­i­cal moves, ­because they are transferred to positions all over France as their c­ areers pro­gress, and the wives or partners of male judges (even when t­hese w ­ omen are judges themselves) adapt their mobility to suit their spouse much more so than the reverse.3 Such job transfers are highly valued when a judge is ­under consideration for a prestigious promotion, so ­these circumstances f­avor per­sis­tent ­career inequalities between male and female judges, despite the strong feminization of the ­career as a w ­ hole. ­These differences explain why judges and clerks do not identify as closely as notaires and ­lawyers do with the interests of businessmen whose tax optimization flirts with the l­egal limit. The law provides f­amily court judges with tools that can compensate for the economic inequalities between men and ­women that worsen with separation, most significantly through the granting of compensatory allowances or owner­ship of the ­family home. This chapter explores how they use this ­legal framework: Do they ­really use it as a tool for equalizing the economic conditions of ex-­spouses ­after separation, or even an instrument of “justice by ­women, for w ­ omen,” as some ­fathers’ rights organ­izations 4 claim? 

Compensations Reserved for Married C ­ ouples Numerous Eu­ro­pean countries have ­legal provisions intended to correct economic inequalities between members of a divorced ­couple, based on three justifications.5



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The first follows a logic of maintenance, guaranteeing some solidarity between ex-­spouses ­after marriage when one of them ends up in a situation of need. The second is rooted in a logic of compensation, intending to make up for one spouse’s loss of the standard of living to which he or she had become accustomed, regardless of what ­those living conditions ­were, for a short time ­after the divorce. Third, a logic of indemnity is applied to right the imbalances observed at the time of breakdown but that had developed during the marriage. This gap usually arises from the spouses’ differentiated specialization in the domestic and professional spheres, which might have seemed balanced during the marriage but when the relationship ended resulted in a very unfair situation in terms of position on the job market or rights to a pension. In divorces in France, a spouse may pay a compensatory allowance to the other to “to compensate, as far as pos­si­ble, for the disparity that the breakdown of the marriage creates in the respective ways of living” (Article 270 of the Civil Code).6 This allowance follows the logics of maintenance and compensation, but also that of indemnity, b­ ecause the Civil Code specifies that the sum should take into account “the consequences of the professional choices made by one spouse during their living together for educating the c­ hildren and the time which must still be devoted to this education, or for favoring his or her spouse’s c­ areer to the detriment of his or her own” (Article 271 of the Civil Code) (see the following box). This grey area surrounding the princi­ple of compensatory allowances is also found in other l­egal provisions intended to limit economic inequalities between men and ­women. One example is surviving spouse benefits, which pay part of a deceased person’s pension to his or her surviving spouse. The system’s effectiveness is often evaluated according to its ability to maintain quality of life a­ fter being widowed, a criterion falling u ­ nder the logic of compensation.7 But when the deceased has been married multiple times, the surviving spouse benefit is divided among the w ­ idow(er)s and prorated according to the length of the marriage, which implies a logic of indemnity. Payment of this pension is also subject to conditions regarding the survivor’s revenues, according to the logic of maintenance. Highlighting ­these contradictions, the economist Lucy ApRoberts ultimately speaks of “conjugal dependence” criteria that have cold, hard consequences for the pension rights of ­women, who have more difficulty getting their rights to surviving spouse benefits recognized, relative to their direct rights to their own pensions.8 Although the surviving spouse’s benefit, like the compensatory

The Compensatory Allowance In The French Civil Code Article 270 Divorce puts an end to the duty of support between spouses. One of the spouses may be compelled to pay the other an allowance intended to compensate, as far as pos­si­ble, for the disparity that the breakdown of the marriage creates in the respective ways of living. This allowance ­shall be in the nature of a lump sum. It s­ hall take the form of a capital the amount of which must be fixed by the judge. However, the judge may refuse to grant such an allowance where equity so demands, e­ither taking into account the criteria set out in Article 271, or when the divorce is declared on account of the blame lying wholly upon the spouse who requests the advantage of this allowance, considering the par­tic­ u­lar circumstances of the breakdown.

Article 271 A compensatory allowance must be fixed according to the needs of the spouse to whom it is paid and to the means of the other, account being taken of the situation at the time of divorce and of its evolution in a foreseeable f­ uture. For this purpose, the judge s­ hall have regard in par­tic­u­lar to: • ­the duration of the marriage; • ­the ages and states of health of the spouses; • ­their professional qualifications and occupations; • ­the consequences of the professional choices made by one spouse during their living together for educating the ­children and the time which must still be devoted to this education, or for favoring his or her spouse’s ­career to the detriment of his or her own; • ­the estimated or foreseeable assets of the spouses, both in capital and income, ­a fter liquidation of the matrimonial regime; • ­their existing and foreseeable rights; • ­their respective situations as to retirement pensions, having estimated, as much as pos­si­ble, the reduction of the retirement rights that circumstances mentioned in the sixth paragraph above might cause for the spouse creditor of the compensatory allowance. Source: David Gruning, Alain R. Levasseur, John Randy Trahan, and Estelle Roy, “Traduction du Code Civil Français en Anglais, Version Bilingue,” 2015. Note: The distinctively masculine gendering of the language of the Civil Code is obscured when translated into En­glish; in the official French Civil Code, e­ very use of “spouse” and “judge” is in the masculine form, and t­ here is no use of balanced terms like “his or her.” 160



Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth Inequality?  161

allowance, is a form of recognition of the connection between the domestic ­labor of wives and the professional c­ areers of men, it is also a significantly downgraded and uncertain form of financial recognition of this ­labor. Like surviving spouse benefits, the many logics under­lying the compensatory allowance limit its field of application in practice. Compensatory allowances are likewise reserved for married ­couples. That being said, the 2015 Census of the French population found that more than one-­fourth of ­couples living together in France w ­ ere not married (19 ­percent ­were cohabiting, 7 ­percent in a civil u ­ nion). While some countries, including Canada, ­England, and Switzerland, are bringing the ­legal rights and obligations of separating unmarried ­couples into line with t­ hose of married ­couples, the same cannot be said of France.9

A Weakened Compensation System, Reserved for the Rich In France, the field of application of compensatory allowances, which only concerns married c­ ouples getting a divorce, was greatly reduced at the dawn of the twenty-­first ­century. This was a consequence of the Law of 30 June 2000, passed by the National Assembly, where the Socialist Party was in the majority at the time. The law transformed compensatory allowances from an annuity to a lump sum (Article 276 of the Civil Code). During debate on the Assembly floor, Socialist Deputy Danièle Bousquet—­well known for her feminist engagement with the French Planned Parenthood—­suggested that “since most ­women now practice a professional activity, allowances resembling maintenance payments (that is, paid as annuities) would be humiliating t­hese days.” So, unlike countries like Canada, where feminist organ­izations consider compensatory allowances to be a tool for rebalancing unjustified financial inequalities between men and ­women (in a logic of indemnity), a familialist reading prevails in France. Economic obligations between ex-­ spouses are widely thought to be but a perpetuation of conjugal duty and de­pen­dency ­after marriage, even by many feminists.10 Legislators also regretted the financial burden of ­these payments on payers who start a new relationship, obliged in a way to maintain two ­house­holds; they argued that it would be best to ­settle all accounts at the time of divorce, leaving each more ­free to start a life with someone e­ lse. And yet divorced men, who represent 96 ­percent of ­those paying compensatory allowances, are more likely to

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start a new relationship, and to do so more rapidly, than are ­women.11 In ­actual fact, the argument amounted to asking that it be even easier for men to start a new relationship. With an argument based on the overly optimistic, if not outright fallacious, notion that equality between the sexes was already achieved, one of the only ­legal tools for compensating economic inequalities between ­women and men was thus significantly weakened. This reform ultimately resulted in compensatory allowances that are now dramatically lower and reserved in practice for more affluent ­couples. A survey conducted two years a­ fter the passage of the law reveals just how weakened the provision has become. In 2003–2004, 80 ­percent of new compensatory allowances took the form of capital to be paid in a lump sum or a few installments following the divorce, while 16 ­percent ­were still in the form of a regular annuity (4 ­percent of cases had both). But benefits in the form of a lump sum (whose median value was almost 22,000 euros) ­were distinctly lower than benefits in the form of an annuity, whose median value was estimated at 93,000 euros (accounting for life expectancy). Annuities ­were paid by p ­ eople whose revenues (averaging 2,350 euros / month) w ­ ere lower than t­hose paying a lump sum (2,940 euros / month).12 The interpretation of ­these figures is obvious. While the annuity system made it pos­si­ble for less wealthy payers to spread their payments out over time, a payment of capital can only be managed in wealthier ­couples with readily accessible assets at the time of divorce. This reform made it more difficult to compensate for economic inequalities between spouses in ­couples that had not accumulated substantial wealth during their time together. ­Today, compensatory allowances in the form of cash capital have become the norm. According to the most recent figures from the Ministry of Justice (2013), nine out of ten compensatory allowances are paid as a lump sum, or in a few payments spread out over a maximum of four years.13 Only one in five divorces includes any compensatory payment in the settlement. Compensatory payments mostly go to ­women (96 ­percent of cases), usually older (age 48 on average), not employed (36 ­percent), and a­ fter a long marriage (average of twenty years). The median amount of compensatory payments in the form of capital is 25,000 (constant) euros. Only 10 ­percent of compensatory allowances go over 100,000 euros, which would be a crushing debt for most men. Such an allowance seems moderate, though, when considering the situation of ­women who are too



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old to resume working and have very low pensions ­because they worked ­little outside of the home. This is illustrated by a case from the trial court of Paris that concluded in 2007. The ­couple had been married for thirty-­ nine years and w ­ ere in their sixties. The man had been a man­ag­er in the aeronautics industry and had just retired with a very comfortable pension of 4,000 euros a month, whereas the pension of his wife, a former part-­ time secretary, was only a tenth of his. The capital of 100,000 euros that the judge granted her corresponded to 400 euros a month for twenty years: combined with her own pension, this meant she would live just barely above the poverty line u ­ ntil age 80, while her husband’s pension would put him in the first decile of the distribution of incomes in France for the rest of his life.14 This example shows that even when the capital is significant, the amount imposed on the husband rarely compensates for the economic disparity between ex-­spouses resulting from the gendered division of ­labor during their life together. This observation can be generalized thanks to a recent statistical study by economists that mea­sures the gaps in the monthly living standards of ex-­ spouses by adding up their respective resources (income from work or capital, replacement income, welfare, f­ amily benefits, child support) divided by the number of consumption units (to account for ­children in their charge).15 In divorce rulings where a compensatory allowance was not granted, the gap in standard of living between ex-­spouses is 32 ­percent a­ fter separation; when a compensatory allowance has been granted the gap is 52 ­percent (excluding the allowance) and 40 ­percent including the allowance (in the form of capital spread out over eight years, in 96 monthly payments). ­These are little-­k nown figures, and rarely the topic of po­liti­cal discussion. Con­temporary French society tolerates that the fact that w ­ omen are the ones who pay the oftentimes daunting price of breaking up. The law seems to have precious few tools for remedying the situation, so how do ­people in the court system use the ones that exist? To answer this question we w ­ ill have to probe in detail the mechanisms of granting and setting compensatory payments.

In the Beginning Was the Husband’s Disposable Wealth In more than two divorces out of three, the compensatory allowance is the result of an agreement between the parties.16 This happens in situations where the spouses came to an agreement on the amount as part of an

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uncontested divorce or a divorce where they agreed on the allowance but other points remained contested. ­These joint requests are the outcome of closed-­door calculations and negotiations between ­lawyers and their clients to arrive at a mutually satisfactory sum for the allowance. Our observations in the trial courts revealed that f­ amily court judges almost invariably accept this figure, ­because they have to re­spect both parties’ requests and also ­because, being on a tight schedule, they balk at the idea of upsetting their agreements.17 In the remaining third of cases, the ­family court judge sets the amount of the compensatory allowance ­because the parties disagree, ­either on the princi­ple or just over the amount. Judges despise the vagueness of the law on the ­matter. Such is the case of Jean Brunetti, a highly experienced judge who welcomed us into his chambers in the ­family court of a major city, where he presides. During the interview, he gave our colleague Hélène Steinmetz a commentary on Article 270 of the Civil Code: “ ‘As far as pos­si­ble,’ ‘where equity so demands’—­how do you determine a rule on such a basis? If the legislator has washed his hands of the issue, we ­can’t find a mathematical rule!” He also complained that he did not always understand Appeals Court decisions: “The law does allow the judge to do what he wants. Sometimes the judge takes account of certain ­things without saying so.” As a consequence, Jean Brunetti and most of the judges we met lack stable references for setting the amounts of compensatory allowances. A handful of methods for calculating allowances circulates among jurisdictions, based on giving vari­ous weights to the criteria of the Civil Code.18 Ultimately, the pressure of their caseloads and uncertainty over how to set a figure do ­little to encourage judges to delve into ­couples’ economic arrangements. When f­ amily court judges do set a compensatory allowance, they, too, apply reversed accounting. The pro­cess ­doesn’t always align with the law, but they pre­sent it as a pragmatic solution. In an interview, Jean Brunetti described the gap between the many criteria anticipated by Article 271 of the Civil Code and ­actual practice, starting with one basic point: To what cash capital does the husband (the usual partner to pay an allowance) have access without having to liquidate f­ amily assets? “You consider supply, you consider demand, you see if ­there’s any money. In situations where ­there’s no cash, ­there might be disparities, but you w ­ on’t do anything! If the man earns 1,500 euros a month and has debts, we ­settle on the amount that he can possibly pay. If you oblige someone to sell property inherited from his



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­ other, that’s also a prob­lem. You have to be pragmatic: How much cash m is available?” For Jean Brunetti, the preliminary step to setting any compensatory allowance is determining the husband’s available income. This logic of reversed accounting takes l­ittle account of the ­legal criteria for calculating allowances. Regardless of the need in which one party might find herself, regardless of the wealth gap between the man and the ­woman, regardless of the unpaid labor (domestic or professional) provided by the wife, what is treated as most impor­tant, first and foremost, is the husband’s ability to pay. Only capital accessible in cash is considered as available for this use: the judge considers that compensation should not endanger the property around which the husband’s f­ amily’s assets are structured. Compensation for an economic in­equality between spouses is thus secondary to the transfer of assets along the male line.

The Primacy of Husbands’ Assets versus Wives’ Unrecognized ­Labor The approach so clearly presented by Jean Brunetti is in fact an implicit norm in the courts. The primacy of the assets available to men in setting compensatory allowances is especially salient in the case of c­ ouples who own their own business. Indeed, ­these cases are emblematic of the lack of ­legal recognition of the ­unpaid labor ­women provide in businesses run by their husbands.19 Fabienne and Eric Callies w ­ ere in their forties and had been married fifteen years when they filed for divorce in 2006. They ran a plant nursery in eastern France, with 1,600 square meters (0.4 acres) of green­houses owned by Eric and his ­mother. For the first seven years of the marriage, Fabienne Callies worked for the f­ amily business with no legally recognized status and thus no pay. In 1999 she took the status of “spouse-­collaborator,” a ­legal status that allows the person to start paying into and benefiting from social programs (such as retirement, unemployment, maternity leave), but still without pay. In preparation for her divorce, she claimed a compensatory allowance of 50,000 euros to make up for the loss of quality of life due to the breakup, which left her unemployed as well as homeless. However, during the time taken by the proceedings, her husband’s material situation declined as well. In November 2006 he had estimated his monthly

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income at 2,500 euros a month, but by February 2007 his l­awyer wrote to the f­ amily court judge to inform him that Eric’s income had declined and that he could no longer afford the set child support (350 euros a month for his 14-­year-­old son who lived with his ­mother, and 200 euros a month in provisional spousal support). A year l­ater, as the divorce was being finalized, the ­lawyer added: “To the extent that Mr. Callies is in an individually owned business, the aforementioned income in fact constitutes the income that the gentleman and his wife managed to make from the farm as two ­people. Since the departure of Mrs. Callies, the revenue, and in the same proportions the available results, have dropped significantly.” When the judge decreed the divorce in March 2009, he de­cided that Fabienne Callies did not meet the conditions to receive a compensatory allowance in the name of her unpaid contribution to the business ­because the divorce had made both of them poorer, and thus had not created a disparity between them. ­Under French law, Fabienne Callies’s seven years of unpaid labor could very well have been considered “hidden ­labor,” unreported by the head of the business (her husband in this case), but it is common for ­family court judges to consider the unpaid labor of wives normal and not award them any compensation ­after the fact. Cases involving ­owners of small and large businesses often raise issues of this kind, rallying more or less honest arguments of an “economic downturn,” “difficulties in the sector,” or a “drop in revenues” to justify someone’s difficulty or inability to pay a compensatory allowance. When they have the ­will and means to do so, some wives denounce the “coordinated insolvency” of their husband. ­Family court judges have ­limited means for verifying such claims. Judges are always hesitant to order a new appraisal ­because they cost thousands of euros to the litigants, or to the state, should the litigants receive ­legal aid. ­These investigations report on rapidly outdated situations, and so the concerned parties may contest the findings as soon as they are released. As we have seen, the wealthiest litigants may mobilize their own experts for a counterappraisal of their income and net worth, but when the litigants are less wealthy and neither party has the means to cover appraisal costs, judges rarely pursue the possibility. While the amount of the allowance is indeed largely determined by the husband’s available assets, it generally only concerns the assets that he declares to the court.



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Domestic L ­ abor: Unpaid ­Labor for “Personal Con­ve­nience” The legitimacy of requests for a compensatory allowance is never taken as a given in divorce cases, ignoring the major income and ­career inequalities between men and w ­ omen, let alone the domestic-­task gap. It is striking how often the closing arguments of husbands’ ­lawyers use the rhe­toric of “personal choice” to interpret wives’ stopping work or ­going to part-­time, when the wives pre­sent such choices as being a joint decision for the good of the ­family. In 2007, a ­couple married for nearly thirty years filed for divorce at the trial court of a major city in southwestern France. He was the CEO of several transportation companies, she was a part-­time teacher, and they w ­ ere disputing a compensatory allowance. The wife’s ­lawyer argued that she “had sacrificed her professional ­career for the ­family” by quitting her job to raise their three ­children, following her husband’s ­career (moving five times in twenty years), and fi­nally ­going back to work part-­time; the husband’s ­lawyer argued that Madam did not abandon her profession during the marriage, but she nonetheless chose to practice it half-­time for her personal con­ve­nience. Such a statement is in no way an insult to the wife: it is consistent in that the occupation of teacher is not easy and that it is perfectly legitimate for a m ­ other to want to f­avor spending more time with her three c­ hildren, all the more so if the husband’s income permits it. . . . ​Furthermore, she always had the option to request a transfer to a school close to the ­family home at the time of the moves occasioned by her husband’s occupation.20 This is an advantage open to teachers to make their lives easier. If Madam wanted to do it, in perfect agreement, indeed, with her husband, the fact remains that it was a personal choice (and I repeat, legitimate) and not an obligation, as Madam claims ­today.

By reframing the c­ ouple’s decisions over the division of domestic, parental, and professional work as a “personal choice,” ­lawyers’ written arguments for a par­tic­u­lar end (the lowest pos­si­ble allowance in this instance) maintain a sexist reading of the world. The rhe­toric of choice used by

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l­awyers and sometimes taken up by judges in their rulings is highly asymmetrical where gender is concerned. Indeed, in France, 39 ­percent of ­mothers altered their employment situations a­ fter the birth of ­children, as compared to 6 ­percent of f­athers.21 Despite that, France comes across as a role model in international comparisons of social and ­family policy supporting paid employment for ­women. A study comparing gender differences in time use over the life course in France, Italy, Sweden, and the United States shows that, all other ­things being equal, when they become m ­ others, Italian w ­ omen’s domestic time increases more than 22 hours on average per week, followed by American ­women (more than 18 hours on average per week). French and Swedish w ­ omen increase domestic time by about 16 hours. The study’s authors conclude: In countries where policies that promote gender equality and balance paid work and ­family are more effective and traditionally well established, such as Sweden and France, the major effect of having young ­children is a temporary reduction of paid working time. Conversely, in countries where ­family policies are almost absent (the US) or where the provision of public child-­c are ser­vices is ­limited (Italy and the US), a large share of ­women still withdraw from the ­labor market.22

The same study shows that young ­fathers’ involvement in the domestic sphere is more heterogeneous across countries: Swedish f­athers exhibit a statistically significant increase in the amount of time spent in domestic tasks and care activities when they have preschool c­ hildren (more than 10 hours a week), and they also maintain their involvement as ­children grow up (around 6 hours). Their Italian or French counter­parts show a smaller change when ­children are younger (around 6 hours), and only a very small one when c­ hildren grow up. US ­fathers are in an intermediate position.

Not only do m ­ others not gain any symbolic benefit from taking care of the ­children, but the rhe­toric of choice also implies that they alone should pay for the material consequences of the ­couple’s breakdown.



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“This Gentleman Has a Lot of Money. Which Is Perhaps What Caused Her Interest in the First Place!” Such a worldview is particularly salient in the bourgeoisie with high economic capital, around which most court debates over compensatory allowances revolve. The availability of capital in well-­off social circles makes compensation pos­si­ble. However, judges often deem w ­ omen’s requests for compensatory allowances to be unjustified, distancing themselves from the figure of the “kept w ­ oman” who tries to exploit the divorce to get rich at her ex-­husband’s expense. In January 2014 Céline and her colleagues Abigail Bourguignon and Romain Piketty attended a divorce hearing at an appeals court in western France, between the director of a telecommunications business and his second wife, who was also his former administrative assistant. The court b­ attle was over the compensatory allowance, ­because Blandine Landreau was claiming 300,000 euros and Jacques Landreau did not want to pay a penny. Blandine Landreau had appealed the first divorce decree, in which the ­family court had decreed mutual fault and set the allowance at 150,000 euros. Blandine Landreau’s l­awyer highlighted her client’s fragile economic situation at the appeal hearing. She had ­stopped paid employment with the birth of their son, now 17 years old, but continued to work for the business for f­ ree as a secretary and accountant. The ­lawyer also reminded the court of the difficulty of finding work over age 50 and how low her pension would be. In contrast, she depicted Jacques Landreau as “well-­heeled” and living “the good life”: an income of over 20,000 euros a month and a net worth pushing 1 million euros, composed of real estate, investments, and shares in the business. He drove a Porsche, while her client’s financial situation was much less favorable: an apartment worth 80,000 euros, shares in a “civil real estate com­pany” jointly owned with her husband (we ­weren’t able to determine the value of her share or her degree of managerial control over it), and no investments. The l­awyer accused Jacques Landreau of elaborating an extremely complicated system in the form of multiple businesses as part of a “tax setup,” “so that his ex-­wife, who is no specialist in business law (like his l­awyer, for that ­matter) does not know exactly how much he owns.” She stated that he had “felt the way the wind was blowing” and had recently made several gifts to his three c­ hildren (two of them from a previous marriage).

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Jacques Landreau’s l­awyer began his plea with a bang: “I did not interrupt the person contradicting me, but every­thing that has just been said is ­either false or imprecise.” He mainly insisted on the wife’s “alcoholism and several affairs,” providing many details documented in the case file. His plea ended with a blockbuster argument concerning assets: If ­there was an “imbalance in the economic situation,” it was to the detriment of the husband, not the wife. He offered several explanations for this claim. Firstly, “the difficult situation of the telecom sector”: “If his situation was comfortable to this point, the f­ uture is completely uncertain!” The main reason, though, was the fact that his client had given his ­children bare owner­ship of all his property while Blandine would get owner­ship of his apartment: “So the lady ­will have more real estate assets than the gentleman!” The ­lawyer demanded that the compensatory allowance be canceled. He also demanded that the divorce decree hold solely the wife at fault. This is just what the appeals court judge Dominique Bernay-­Chatel did, and although she did grant a compensatory allowance, it was reduced to 85,000 euros, much less than provided by the first decree. In a long interview we recorded a month a­ fter this day in court, the judge expanded on the thinking b­ ehind her decision. Firstly, she indeed thought that t­ here was no disparity in the ex-­spouses’ economic conditions. This means that the strategy of husbands making gifts to ­children at the time of the divorce to reduce any potential compensatory allowance (a “classic” move according to the l­awyers we interviewed) is quite effective, despite the fact that the man retains usufruct of his assets, and thus any revenues they might produce. Secondly, moral condemnation of the wife dominated all economic calculations. Even though Blandine Landreau was a former employee of the business and became an unpaid contributor as the boss’s wife, the judge categorized her as a “kept ­woman” and denied the value of her work: “She screwed up the business! Apparently she ­didn’t do anything!” In saying this, Dominique Bernay-­Chatel ­adopted the words of Jacques Landreau’s employees’ testimony in his case file, never acknowledging the questionable neutrality of statements made by employees at the demand of their employer. The judge’s decision was lastly influenced by the fact that Jacques Landreau had filed for divorce several years e­ arlier, ultimately withdrawing the suit. In the aftermath the Landreaus had changed their marital regime from “partial community property” to “separation of assets.” This change was



Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth Inequality?  171

unfavorable to the wife b­ ecause her earnings w ­ ere much lower than her husband’s, so she would henceforth accumulate fewer assets than he, but it had led to an initial liquidation of community property to recalibrate their situations ­under the new regime. The judge explained that, as a result, “­She’d already ended up the beneficiary of 169,700 euros worth of assets at the time, so s­ he’d already stuffed her pockets well! She writes him a nice ­little love letter and it’s back on!” The judge believed that the case ultimately boiled down to the wife’s cupidity. “This gentleman has a lot of money. Which is perhaps what caused her interest in the first place! We see a lot of that. ­Women ­aren’t g­ reat that way, huh? [She hammers on this phrase by repeating it twice, laughing]. I’ve had a heap of cases the past three years, cases where ­there’s a lot of money and where the ­women, overall, ­they’re pretty pathetic. You ­didn’t hear me say that! [She laughs again] . . . ​W hen they hear that, t­ hey’re ­going to say ‘she’s a misogynist, that one is, she’s a misogynist!’ But it’s not true!” Is this in fact an especially misogynist judge or simply one who is deeply hostile to compensatory allowances? In this case, Dominique Bernay-­Chatel explained that she had even considered not granting any allowance at all. She came to a decision only a­ fter an informal discussion with a (male) colleague, who, she said, told her, “Wow, ­you’re pushing it a bit far!,” showing that t­ here are indeed individual variations in how judges appreciate the economic situations of separating ­couples. Dominique Bernay-­Chatel’s position is far from being an isolated example, however.

Female Judges Are Reluctant to Set Compensatory Allowances During our research in trial courts, we had already noticed the reluctance of f­amily court judges to set compensatory allowances, which some considered “outdated” in the era of professional equality between men and ­women and an incentive to keep w ­ omen at home.23 This argument is also found in the writings of economists, which is surprising b­ ecause it can easily be reversed: high compensatory allowances could encourage men to value their wives’ ­careers and ­favor their professional advancement.24 No one ever uses this parallel argument. By pursuing our research in appeals courts, where the high-­figure compensatory allowance b­ attles of the bourgeoisie are concentrated, we w ­ ere able to get a better grasp of what was at stake when such conflicts go to

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court. Th ­ ere is a social confrontation between female judges and litigants from the economic fractions of the upper classes (that is, t­ hose who are dominant in the business and economic world—­e xecutives, business ­owners, financial brokers, and the like—­who possess high economic capital but lower cultural capital).25 When female appeals court judges discussed the severity of their judgments with us, they rejected the traditional bourgeois marital model and w ­ ere often scornful of ­women of their generation who did not have a c­ areer like theirs. Perhaps they i­magined that we, as highly educated working w ­ omen, shared this point of view. Th ­ ese judges might also tend to exaggerate their gender neutrality when speaking with sociologists b­ ecause, as w ­ omen, they might be suspected of favoring other ­women in their decisions (as ­fathers’ rights organ­izations regularly accuse them of d ­ oing).26 Let’s hear what the head judge of the ­family division of an appeals court had to say on the subject in her interview with our colleague Julie Minoc. About 60 years old, this judge was at the peak of her ­career. Her ­father had graduated from the highly selective university that trains the civil ser­ vice elite, and her m ­ other was a primary school teacher. The judge married an engineer in the Air Force who had retired by the time of the interview. “­Here, we ­aren’t very generous with compensatory allowances. . . . ​Marriage ­doesn’t come with a monthly check! This is no longer the nineteenth ­century! ­Women who’ve never worked so they could take care of their ­children and who sacrificed their c­ areers so their husbands could have one, that just d ­ oesn’t soften us, that ­doesn’t convince us. We h ­ ere are serious workers [in the masculine form]!” Her words make a spontaneous connection between the position of the Court of Appeals regarding compensatory allowances, explic­itly described as being scanty, and a judge’s work ethic, expressed in a masculine formulation. The f­ amily division over which she presides is majority-­female (two men out of nine judges, and only one male clerk). F ­ amily court is one of the most feminized parts of the judiciary: eight of ten judges are ­women in the ­family division of the trial courts.27 W ­ omen are still the majority in higher-­ranking appeals courts, though to a lesser extent b­ ecause judges’ c­ areers advance by se­niority and so appeals court judges are from an older generation with fewer w ­ omen. The glass ceiling also has an effect, as ­women are slower to rise to grade­one positions (Court of Appeals judge) and are less likely to reach the pinnacle of the hierarchy (president of a Court of Appeals).28



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The late-­career female judges we met in appeals courts w ­ ere born between 1950 and 1965. They are characterized by their high social origins, with parents who w ­ ere professionals, private-­sector man­ag­ers or executives, high-­ranking civil servants, or teachers. Their life partners have salaried jobs linked to a high level of education (including judge, upper management, engineer, airline pi­lot, academic). Although they earn a good living, their social backgrounds and domestic partners put them at some remove from the economic bourgeoisie. The fact that they are part of the intellectual fraction of the upper classes explains their relative indifference to the situations of well-­off unemployed ­women of the economic bourgeoisie. It also explains their reluctance to grant high compensatory allowances. Considering their c­ areer to be representative of the social destiny of ­women of their generation, they think that w ­ omen can (and must) ensure their own financial in­de­pen­dence. This is a highly deformed conception of the social real­ity of France ­today. Let’s take a closer look at the f­amily and professional trajectory of Do­ minique Bernay-­Chatel, the judge who practically halved the compensatory allowance in the Landreau divorce. We met her just before she retired, and in the recorded interview she reflected back on her personal and professional life. She came from the city of Saint-­Etienne, where her f­ ather was a journalist and her ­mother a homemaker. She met her ­future husband in high school in the late 1960s. They went to law school together, and he went on to have a brilliant c­ areer as a prosecutor while she became a judge. The story of her ­career is paced by her husband’s promotions, which took them all over France. Job a­ fter job, she managed to follow him, but always had to make l­ittle sacrifices in her positions to do so. Her c­ areer was also interrupted by two pregnancies, each followed by a year of parental leave. This subject held a significant place in her account ­because Céline was six months pregnant at the time of the interview, prompting the judge to make many allusions to her own pregnancies and ­children and their consequences on her ­career. She thus gave a detailed description of what she called her “organ­ization” for taking care at once of her young ­children and her case files, which often got done at night or on weekends. She mentioned hiring a full-­time ­house­keeper who looked ­after the ­children, the shopping, meals, and h ­ ouse­work ­every day, which she experienced as a victory that “gave me such comfort.” She acknowledged that she “­couldn’t count too much” on her husband for help with domestic

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chores. In this way Dominique Bernay-­Chatel vaunted the model of the double-­income ­couple, even though her own c­ areer was subordinate to her husband’s and responsibility for domestic and parental ­labor always fell to her. The arrangements they came to as a ­couple (by externalizing domestic ­labor) led her to denigrate the unemployed wives of businessmen, whom she described as “kept w ­ omen,” although she herself had to fight to be able to devote herself to her job “like a man,” with only partially successful results. The norm of ­women’s financial in­de­pen­dence, which is palpable in the well-­educated ­middle and upper classes and pre­sent among judges, puts the burden mainly on ­women.29 They feel obliged to contribute to ­house­hold expenses to the same extent as their partners, despite earning less and also bearing responsibility for ­house­hold tasks. They alone strug­gle to reconcile professional ­career and ­house­work, while putting far less money aside than their partners. Paradoxically, this norm of financial in­de­pen­dence thus contributes to the wealth gap between men and w ­ omen that is only exposed at the time of breakdown or divorce. But this norm also heavi­ly influences how well-­educated working w ­ omen of the upper classes may judge other ­women who have not attained such financial in­de­pen­dence. The denigration of the sexual division of ­labor in the economic bourgeoisie appears frequently in our interviews with judges. When Florence Simonin, deputy head of a Court of Appeals, first welcomed us into her court, she summed it up this way: “It still happens rather frequently outside of Paris: the gentleman is self-­employed, fifty-­ish, he leaves his wife for a bright young ­t hing, and the first mommy, who ­hasn’t lifted a fin­ger for years, asks for a compensatory allowance. And that’s when t­ hese gentlemen turn petty!” Sparing neither men nor ­women, Florence Simonin expressed downright scorn for “the provincial bourgeoisie” whose members tear each other apart over assets when they divorce. Judges never say such ­things in front of litigants, of course. ­These expressions of gender or class distance, sometimes even disdain, are made pos­si­ble by the judges’ sense of complicity with the sociologists—­seen as Pa­ri­sian, highly educated, and professionally active—­a nd are further encouraged by the research situation, where we show empathy t­ oward the ­people we interview as part of our effort to understand their perspective. Other ­women, in the position to request a compensatory allowance, are the ones who lose out.



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Through their strong reluctance to set compensatory allowances, ­family judges thus contribute to the impoverishment of ­women at the time of divorce, even w ­ omen in the higher propertied classes. In contrast, men in this social milieu continue to accumulate assets their ­whole life long, and over the course of successive marriages.

Judges’ ­Limited View of F ­ amily Wealth Arrangements Judges have a ­limited field of intervention where wealth arrangements between ex-­spouses are concerned. We have already encountered some of ­these restrictions: the ­legal tools for compensating for economic inequalities between men and ­women only apply to married ­couples and allowances are ­limited by the extent of the man’s available assets, not to mention judges’ disinclination to grant them. But t­here is an even subtler limitation to judges’ ability to intervene, rooted in the very organ­ization and temporality of divorce proceedings. It is increasingly common for uncontested divorces to resort to mutual consent procedures, which leads to negotiations over post-­conjugal economic arrangements most often occurring b­ ehind the closed doors of ­lawyers’ and notaires’ offices. In this procedure, the parties must agree on the princi­ple of divorce as well as its consequences, first and foremost the economic ones (marital home, compensatory allowance, child support, division of marital property). T ­ oday in France, more than half of all separating married ­couples chose “divorce by mutual consent,” uncontested divorce. U ­ ntil recently this type of divorce required only one short hearing with a ­family court judge, who usually merely approved the presented agreement. Of the 852 uncontested divorce agreements from 2013 that we examined, only 12 had not been approved (in most cases only b­ ecause one of the parties had changed his or her mind about the divorce).30 Since 2017, not even this brief judicial approval exists: all that’s needed to divorce is two l­awyers and a notaire. Like the rest of Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, France is taking its own path to shifting dispute pro­cessing from public to private ordering: judges are making fewer decisions than they used to.31 Given how recent the reform is, it is hard to say if this change has any significant impact. In the new system, the original divorce agreements are filed directly with ­lawyers and officially registered by notaires rather than the court, which ­will make it considerably more difficult to study

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uncontested divorces b­ ecause the state no longer centralizes archives and data for them. ­Lawyers and notaires no longer have the opportunity to go before a ­family court judge, which helped their clients understand the rights of their spouse and sometimes brought them to moderate their demands. The outcome of uncontested divorce negotiations—­especially the amount of the compensatory allowance and how marital property ­will be liquidated—­now depends entirely on the power relations between spouses, the power relations between their l­awyers (bearing in mind that the husband and wife do not have the same financial means for paying fees), and the professional habits of the notaire in charge of the liquidation. A growing proportion of economic arrangements between spouses thus escape court intervention and are discussed out of judges’ sight. In contested divorces, when spouses e­ ither disagree over the very idea of a divorce or, more frequently, its (predominantly economic) consequences, setting a compensatory allowance is still the prerogative of the ­family court. However, three out of four divorces are decreed before the liquidation of marital property, which takes place at the notaire’s office rather than in court.32 This significantly limits the information available to judges. As we have already seen, liquidations (including the division of marital property between spouses and the determination of compensation) almost never go to court. In princi­ple, the compensatory allowances set by f­ amily court judges must take account of “the estimated or foreseeable assets of the spouses, both in capital and income, a­ fter liquidation of the matrimonial regime” (Article 271 of the Civil Code). But in ­actual fact, judges quite often decide on compensatory allowances without knowing how marital property w ­ ill actually be liquidated, or who w ­ ill actually get what. One morning in November 2014 Céline and a colleague, Vanessa Codaccioni, attended a hearing at the Paris Court of Appeals. ­There was a highly contested case between Guy Rosio, owner of a construction business, and his wife, Martine Petit, who had been a secretary in his business for twenty years. She had filed an appeal. Among other t­ hings, she was contesting the compensatory allowance of 60,000 euros granted by the lower court. She had asked for 500,000 euros, while her husband had proposed paying nothing. She also requested that an appraisal be ordered to “draw up an estimated inventory and make proposals as to the settlement of the spouses’ pecuniary interests,” which had been refused in the initial proceedings.



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The wife’s ­lawyer, Catherine Bulle, was a former notaire renowned for her skill in ­family asset ­matters. In her closing arguments and her ninety-­ page written plea, she lingered over the compensatory allowance and the asset inventory. The ­couple’s asset situation was indeed complex. They married u ­ nder the default regime in France of “community of assets acquired ­after marriage.” Guy Rosio had started his business before their marriage, but the community property had prob­ably contributed to the business’s capital growth. He sold it for 1.73 million euros in 2010, two years ­after leaving his wife (he then invested this money in a tattooing business in the south of France that seemed not to turn a profit). Furthermore, in 1991, shortly ­a fter their marriage, the ­couple created a “civil real estate com­pany” to manage four rental properties with a total value of 745,000 euros. The marital home, still occupied by Martine Petit in accordance with the pendente lite order, was owned solely by the husband, whose ­mother had bequeathed it to him and his three ­sisters. To become full owner, he had to buy out their shares, which he may have done using funds belonging to the community property. The ­couple also bought a vacation home on the Côte d’Azur during the marriage, and the renovations had been paid by Guy Rosio using money of vague provenance. The value of the ­house was also unclear: Guy Rosio claimed 650,000 euros, but a local real estate agent consulted by Martine Petit put it at 1.48 million euros. In the discussion of the compensatory allowance, Guy Rosio emphasized the significant drop in his income: it was 13,000 euros a month when he owned the com­pany, plummeted to a salary of 6,000 euros when he sold his shares and became director, and then dropped to 4,000 euros in public “return to work” assistance ­after he was declared unfit for his position due to serious health prob­lems and let go. Martine Petit, the d ­ aughter of a manual worker with a low-­level vocational certification in secretarial work, highlighted the fact that she had always worked for her husband for a modest salary, sometimes no pay at all, b­ ecause she took three years of parental leave a­ fter the births of each of their three ­daughters. For her, the separation was tantamount to being fired. ­A fter a period of unemployment, she found a job in 2012 with a monthly salary of 1,800 euros. Although t­here prob­ably was a significant income and asset disparity between the ex-­spouses, it was hard to gauge its extent. The l­awyer Catherine Bulle saw two options. The first was to consider that most of the assets belonged to Guy Rosio, and that this disparity should be made up for

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by a high compensatory allowance; the second was to consider that he owed significant reimbursements to the community property (she counted thirty-­ four such debts), which would put the marital liquidation more in the wife’s f­avor, making it acceptable for her to receive a lower allowance. At the hearing Catherine Bulle was clearly in f­ avor of the second option: “For the compensatory allowance, my client had requested 500,000 euros in the initial proceedings. I have lowered it to 300,000 euros b­ ecause I am sure that I ­will manage to squeeze some assets into the community property. Round two ­will be the liquidation!” In an interview by Sibylle and Camile Phé shortly a­ fter the hearing, the ­lawyer explained her strategy: “I did something surprising—­I lowered the requested amount for the allowance. If I ­were the judge, I would say that the gentleman does not belie the need for reimbursements, so I put a small allowance but I’m making it impossible for the gentleman to refuse the reimbursements at the time of liquidation.” She was nonetheless worried about the risks of this strategy: she knew that judges often content themselves with ordering the liquidation without making detailed decisions on its constituent parts. Ultimately the ruling of the Court of Appeals proved her worries to be justified. It did at least double the amount of the compensatory allowance, which went from 60,000 euros to 120,000, and Martine Petit was also awarded 10,000 euros in damages. But the ruling simply noted that “the parties cannot agree on the value of the shares due to each in the liquidation of the community property,” without indicating ­whether Guy Rosio owed reimbursements to the community property, and if so, which ones or how much. To the contrary, in explaining the sum set for the compensatory allowance, the ruling stated that “the partition of the community property ­will undoubtedly be unequal, given the personal contributions made by Mr. Rosio.” In other words, the decision was made with only rough knowledge of the wealth inequalities that would result from the separation, without providing any guarantees of how this wealth should be divided. It is not merely that a non-­negligible proportion of ­couples separate without any court intervention; even when the court does intervene, it only rules on a ­limited part of the economic issues at stake in the separation. When judges get involved, they use the l­egal tools at hand—­especially compensatory allowances—­with a distorted view of the economic situations of the ex-­spouses.



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Who Keeps the Marital Home, the Pace of Liquidation, and Power Relations The procedural structure concretely contributes to the economic weakening of ­women through the chronology and pace it imposes on postmarital economic arrangements. Procedural timing is anything but neutral. The longer divorce proceedings last, the more it ­favors the spouse who has the liquidity to maintain his or her position in the negotiation, who in most cases is the husband. This is particularly true when it comes to the granting of the marital home and the liquidation of marital property. February 24, 2016. Céline and Gabrielle Schütz spent the day at the office of Michèle Abitbol, a respected f­amily l­awyer in central-­western France whom we have encountered several times in this book. Stéphanie Berland had made an appointment to see her ­lawyer late that morning for an explanation of the clauses of her pendente lite order, the first step of her divorce, which she had just gotten in the mail. The rather heavy-­set ­woman in her forties wore her ski jacket throughout the meeting, a clear sign of how ill at ease she was in the posh, well-­heated office. She had even come with her ­father, a former bank employee, who spoke up periodically and took scrupulous notes of the ­whole conversation. Stéphanie Berland was a self-­employed house-­call dog groomer, which she said earned her only 500 euros a month, although she let it be understood that this was a low-­ball estimate that allowed her to receive supplementary welfare. Her husband earned a better living of 1,800 euros a month as a construction foreman. They had two ­daughters, aged 15 and 11, who lived with their m ­ other. ­There had been some custody glitches over weekends and vacations with the f­ather since the separation, but that was not what troubled Stéphanie the most. Her main worry was making ends meet ­every month ­after having left the ­family home in a rush. Stéphanie told her ­lawyer that during their umpteenth violent fight, she got afraid and called the police, who told her she should leave the ­house as soon as pos­ si­ble ­because her husband, a hunter, owned guns. She first took her d ­ aughters to her parents’ ­house, and then looked for an apartment, where they moved a few weeks ­later. ­Things ­were hard at the end of the month, and her husband h ­ adn’t started paying the child support (320 euros per month total for two c­ hildren) that had been set by the judge the preceding month. Most of the discussion with the ­lawyer concerned the ­future of the ­house, which the pendente lite order had granted to the husband, who was

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still living ­there and wished to keep it. It was an im­mense structure with outbuildings (shed, workshop, barn) in the country, worth an estimated 100,000 euros, which he was still paying off. Stéphanie Berland had said she ­didn’t want the marital home but was hoping that her husband would quickly buy out her share so she would no longer have to pay the loan and would have some liquidity. Her l­awyer in turn explained to her that her woes w ­ ere far from over and that the outcome of the ­house issue was far from certain. This was b­ ecause of the time frame for the economic settlement of a divorce. When one party files a petition for divorce, a conciliation hearing is scheduled several months hence, which ends with the issuing of a pendente lite order if the ­couple does not reconcile. Of par­tic­u­lar note ­here, this order grants the marital home to one of the spouses for the duration of the divorce proceedings, ­either for ­free or with payments. In this instance, Stéphanie Berland’s husband had been granted the h ­ ouse with payments, meaning that he owed an indemnity to compensate for his exclusive use of property they both owned. Michèle Abitbol explained what that meant in real terms. Her husband owed her a sort of “rent.” The ­lawyer proposed two ways of calculating this indemnity. One was based on a percentage of the cost of the ­house (which came to 118 euros per month), and the other based on its rental value, which was much more advantageous to her client, since it amounted to twice as much. But regardless of the method they chose, the indemnity would not come in the form of a monthly payment—it would only be credited to her share upon liquidation of marital assets at the notaire’s office. But, as we saw e­ arlier, liquidation usually happens ­a fter the divorce decree, which ­orders that it be done. The notaire bases the liquidation on the development of a consensus, which can be challenging to arrive at and can take a long time—up to several years—­during which time Stéphanie Berland would not touch a penny of compensation from her ex-­husband, while still having to pay her share of the ­house loan (246 euros per month) as well as rent to ­house herself and their ­daughters (126 euros per month, ­after public housing assistance). Each spouse’s financial ability to wait for a satisfactory settlement of assets in the separation is of the essence. Relatively painless for t­hose with adequate savings, the pace of liquidation of marital property has power­ful material repercussions for ­those with only modest incomes, especially when



Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth Inequality?  181

that income is irregular. Over the course of her l­awyer’s explanations, Stéphanie Berland gradually realized that every­thing depended on her ex-­ husband’s diligence and ability to pay the balancing payment, and that during all this time he would have a roof over his head. She recapped: “He has to pay this rent, and it ­will be included in the [hesitates, stumbling over the term] balancing payment when he buys out my shares.” The l­awyer agreed. stéphanie berland: What if he c­ an’t keep up? . . . ​Or if he ­can’t get a loan? ­father: It could go on forever . . . ­l awyer: Exactly, that’s why you ­don’t care about time when you are still in the marital home. The prob­lem ­here is that it can last a long time. ­father: She ­couldn’t stay . . . ­l awyer: But if he’s a pain, it could take a long time! [Speaking to the f­ ather] I’m not punishing your ­daughter b­ ecause she left her home, you know! ­We’re g­ oing to try to get through this anyway. It’s in our interest to negotiate. But if he ­doesn’t want to negotiate, then it could take a long time, the liquidation. . . . ​I wanted to advise your d ­ aughter to stay [in the home] and that it was up to him to leave, but she ­didn’t want to, she’s your ­daughter, it’s her life, and she ­didn’t want to! I always advise my clients to never leave . . . ​ ­because the h ­ ouse is a point of leverage, an instrument of power over the other. If you stay in the h ­ ouse, then he is trapped, eco­nom­ically speaking. [In a solemn tone, addressing Stéphanie] Madam, I do hope that he ­w ill agree to go before the notaire. I say so before your ­father, but, if he does not want to go to the notaire, then you are trapped, and you ­won’t get your money for another two or three years.

Michèle Abitbol summed it up: “Leaving the marital home is like losing your rook at chess”: the one remaining in the marital home (often the man) is in a position of strength to negotiate the appraisal of the ­house and the balancing payment. His financial ability, his goodwill, and his time frame determine how the liquidation ­will play out. Meanwhile, the other party

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accumulates daily expenses and might find herself suddenly forced to accept a low appraisal of the property whose value w ­ ill be split in two. How is it that Stéphanie Berland, like so many ­women, gave up so quickly on buying out the f­ amily home?

Keeping the ­Family Home: A Rigged Game If ­women are generally in a poor position to keep the ­family home ­after a separation, it is mainly b­ ecause they are less wealthy than their partners. Firstly, in terms of income: In France in 2011 t­ here was a 42 ­percent gap in ­favor of men in different-­sex ­couples, and only one quarter of ­women earned more than their husbands.33 Secondly, we saw that they also have fewer assets: they are less often in the position of favored heir in their ­family of origin, are on average younger than their husbands, and have accumulated fewer personally owned possessions, and their professional position rarely allows them to accumulate as much as their husband through work. Most w ­ omen are in a distinctly less favorable position to take over a homeowner’s loan at the bank and buy out their husband’s share. Bernard Lecart, a notaire in a residential town in southwestern France, put it this way: “It’s all very well and good to get a divorce, but you ­don’t divorce your banker, right? So who can take over the ­house, who can take on the loan to avoid having to renegotiate more time for repayment—­because t­ here ­won’t be the same income. So, all that, it’s not g­ oing to happen in three days, it’ll take a long time, but we still often find solutions.” The solutions are likely to involve the husband keeping the f­ amily home, which, provided the choice is consensual, is not questioned by ­family court judges. As civil judges, they base their deliberations on the requests of the concerned parties and validate such preexisting situations rather than reversing them, so long as one of the parties does not express strong opposition to the status quo.34 The granting of the ­family home may thus lead to economic inequalities instead of remedying them. In uncontested divorces, negotiated in l­awyer’s and notaire’s offices, the marital home is sometimes considered a space of domestic labor for the raising of c­ hildren. It may formally be granted to the ex-­wife as a compensatory payment in acknowl­edgment of the sacrifices she had made for her ex-­husband’s ­career. Arrangements like this are less common in contested separations, if only b­ ecause compensatory allowances are set prior



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to liquidation: first, the compensatory allowance is discussed in absence of a clear inventory of the former ­couple’s assets, and only ­later is the partitioning of the marital assets negotiated with the notaire (including the fate of the marital residence if they are o­ wners). Spreading wealth arrangements out over time in this way proves to be unfavorable to ­women: frequently finding themselves in more unstable economic positions, they more readily accept a negotiated solution that undervalues their share of marital assets, if it means they can get it more quickly. The person who remains in the ­family home controls not only the framing of the liquidation of marital assets, but also its pace. The question is not how much the ­house would be worth on the market, but how much its occupant is prepared to pay his or her ex-­spouse—­and when. In Stéphanie Berland’s case, the compensation she might hope to obtain for her ­house depends as much on her ex-­husband’s ability to pay and diligence in ­doing so as it does her own ability to wait and negotiate. We saw a similar situation in Chapter 4, where Sophie Pourquerie, an academic (a jurist, no less), had the means to wait and fight back against the low estimates of her ex-­husband, a businessman in construction, who was still living in the marital home. A ­ fter seven years of back and forth, this resulted in the sale of the ­house and the proceeds being divided equally between them. Stéphanie Berland’s position was not nearly as good. ­Because of her low income, she was in a hurry to end payments of the loan for a ­house in which she no longer lived, which drained her bud­get of nearly 250 euros a month. She ­couldn’t afford to wait. Stéphanie Berland did have one economic edge, ­because she had made a higher initial contribution than her husband at the time of purchase and still owned 59 ­percent of the ­house. But even with this advantage, she still lacked the wherewithal to keep the house—­she did not have the financial means to stay ­there, given her low income and ­limited savings, and was furthermore forced to leave this scene of domestic vio­lence, for her own physical and ­mental welfare. “She ­really ­couldn’t stay!” lamented her f­ ather. More ­women than men experience the need to flee domestic vio­lence and avoid confrontation with their ex-­partner, a situation that is sometimes compounded by economic constraints. An annual study by the French Ministry of the Interior and the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) has consistently shown that three out of four victims of domestic vio­lence in France are w ­ omen, a figure that only counts

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physical and sexual vio­lence by married or unmarried partners or ex-­ partners and excludes other forms of vio­lence (such as verbal, psychological, or economic).35 Findings from other countries are comparable, although quantifications of conjugal vio­lence vary greatly according to the research protocol used in each country and the institution conducting the study.36 In the United States, about 1 in 4 ­women and 1 in 10 men have experienced contact sexual vio­lence, physical vio­lence, and / or stalking by an intimate partner and reported an impact of intimate partner vio­lence during their lifetime; the same study shows, however, that when ­people are questioned about conjugal vio­lence experienced in the current year, the gap between w ­ omen’s and men’s declarations is much smaller.37 Sociologist Catherine Cavalin sums it up thus: “The relations between gender, residence—­the fact of having one or not, the fact that one might lose it ­after being subjected to vio­lence—­and vio­lence reflect the major inequalities between the two sexes.”38 The time frame of ­legal procedures for divorce contributes to ­these inequalities by transforming departure from home at a time of crisis into a permanent handicap in negotiating wealth arrangements between ex-­spouses. The creation of restraining ­orders with the law of 9 July 2010 was intended to reverse this situation by allowing f­ amily court judges to give a summary order that, among other t­ hings, can force a violent partner to leave the marital home.39 But this emergency mea­sure is rarely implemented in practice ­because restraining o­ rders disrupt f­amily court judges’ cognitive categories. They are first and foremost charged with fostering reconciliation, so their primary concern is ensuring that neither party is unfairly manipulating accusations of vio­lence for his or her personal ends.40 Ultimately, court intervention to compensate for the economic inequalities between the genders that emerge at separation seems to be quite ­limited. In all social backgrounds, although in dif­fer­ent ways and with more or less tragic results, court-­based f­ amily law fails to counteract ­women’s impoverishment. ­Legal professionals practice reversed accounting in the courts; inherently sexist, this accounting considerably reduces the reach of legally instituted instruments for making up for economic inequalities between ex-­spouses. Compensatory allowances depend primarily on the husband’s available wealth. Since they are paid as a lump sum, they are the reserve of better-­off married c­ ouples. Moreover, they depend less on the ex-­wife’s needs than on the ex-­husband’s ability to pay cash, excluding his



Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth Inequality?  185

structuring assets. Being granted residency in the marital home, which is de­cided in court and tends to f­ avor men, also gives them an advantage in the liquidation of marital property: they are the ones who decide on how much financial compensation their ex-­partners w ­ ill receive and when they ­will be ready to pay it. Time and money are on their side. Just like partitions made with the notaire, where one does not challenge the fact that a male heir w ­ ill get the “­things that must be kept,” the court’s calculations start with an unspoken fact: w ­ omen have performed and w ­ ill continue to take on the lion’s share of domestic tasks, especially in parenting. Judges and ­lawyers alike underestimate the overall contribution of this ­house and parental work to the c­ ouple’s wealth. As in successions and liquidations of marital property, the starting point for calculations is the debtor’s ability (and willingness) to pay—­the heir who owes his siblings a balancing payment, the spouse who remains in the marital home, the partner who takes a lesser role in raising ­children. The family-­law procedures discussed in this chapter—­setting a compensatory allowance and liquidation of marital property—­both presuppose the existence of assets. But what does the court do when the separating ­couples do not own their housing, or have no assets at all? What happens to working-­class w ­ omen whose partner may well have a low income, but whose own incomes are even lower ­because they ­don’t work, are unemployed, retired, or working part-­t ime? What becomes of ­women whose different-­sex relationship secured them in the m ­ iddle classes but whose separations leave them with a l­imited income and c­ hildren to look a­ fter? What provision does ­family law make to balance unequal living standards between ex-­spouses at the time of separation when ­there is no available capital? To what extent do social ser­vice administrations (child benefits, housing assistance, retirement benefits) pick up where the civil law left off, redistributing public funds to help the poorest w ­ omen?

7 The Par­tic­u­lar Hardships of Proletarian Ex-­Wives

I

t was an ordinary morning in a ­family court in greater Paris in 2009. Two members of our research team, Hélène Steinmetz and Marion Azuelos, had an appointment with judge Anna de Mattéi so they could attend the morning’s hearings. The court building was only ten years old, and hearings w ­ ere held in the judges’ comfortable and modern chambers, all in wood and glass. A pile of folders in vari­ous colors was lined up for the day: green for divorces, yellow for postdivorce or nondivorce cases, and pink for child-­support requests concerning a child over the age of majority. Anna de Mattéi was not your typical judge. Originally from Argentina, where she had been a judge, she went back to law school in France and became a ­lawyer, and then went on to pass the examination to become a judge—­a very rare progression in France, where ­lawyers and judges take divergent educational paths. She had considerable experience in penal law but had been h ­ andling f­amily cases for only six months. She was around 50 at the time and wore a sophisticated black and red belted dress with matching glasses and jewelry; the research team nicknamed her “Fanny Ardant,” ­after a French actress of comparable elegant style. Her careful diction gave a clue that French w ­ asn’t her primary language, although she spoke it perfectly. Her clerk, Nadia Asloum, entered her chambers and went directly to her computer in a corner of the office. She was dressed far more casually than the judge, in jeans and a turtleneck sweater. 186



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  187

It was 9:15 a.m. and Anna de Mattéi was impatient, with fifteen cases and as many ­couples to hear that morning. The first on the stack was yellow: an unmarried c­ ouple appearing without l­awyers to s­ ettle the custody and support of their child. “Can we begin?” the judge asked the clerk, who said yes and ­rose to call the ­couple in from the hallway. As she stepped through the office door she said, “I think it’s a ­couple of re-­nois,” a slang term for Blacks. Soon Moussa Dembélé was sitting in one of the chairs facing the judge’s desk. He was dressed in a classic white shirt, leather jacket, and glasses. He was waiting for Fatimata Diakité to take her place beside him, which took a while ­because she came to court with a baby that Nadia Asloum would not let into the chambers. Blocking the doorway, the clerk declared with a smile that she was “confiscating her d ­ aughter” to put her in the care of the reception desk. Fatimata Diakité was wearing a ­simple dress and jeans, with sandals that she quickly slipped off ­under her chair. The hearing could fi­nally start once the clerk returned. Originally from Mali, Moussa Dembélé and Fatimata Diakité ­were both around 30. They had lived together for barely two years and separated in 2006, shortly ­after the birth of their son, Madiaba, who was 3 by the time of the hearing. Madiaba had been in his m ­ other’s care since birth, but a ­family court judge placed him in a foster home for a time ­because she had trou­ble finding housing. For a few months Madiaba had gone back to living with his ­mother (and baby half-­sister, waiting at the reception desk). In fact, it was the local branch of the ­family benefits office that had pressed Fatimata to go to ­family court. Part of the French public welfare system, the nationwide network of f­amily benefits offices (caisses d’allocations familales) provides recipients of a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds with support ranging from non-­means-­tested f­ amily benefits to housing allowances and ensuring a minimum income. ­Because Moussa did not pay child support, the ­family benefits office accorded Fatimata the “­Family Support Benefit” (allocation de soutien familial), which is publicly funded supplementary child-­support assistance that can help make up for unpaid support when a parent is unable to fulfill his or her obligations. The F ­ amily Support Benefit amounted to 90 euros a month per child in 2009 and would only be renewed if the courts ruled that Moussa was destitute. Although Fatimata Diakité’s situation had improved since finding stable, ­free housing with a ­family member, her bud­getary situation was still very

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tight. Unemployed and single, Fatimata had a monthly bud­get of 780 euros for herself and her two c­ hildren, which was well below the poverty line of 954 euros for a single individual in France in 2009. It consisted solely of welfare benefits—­family benefits, single parent benefits, and F ­ amily Support Benefits—­a ll disbursed by the ­family benefits office. She also mentioned that she sometimes “filled in” to supplement her income, but it w ­ asn’t clear what she meant by that or how frequent it was, and t­ here was no tangible proof. In contrast to Fatimata Diakité, who had difficulty expressing herself in French and whose answers to the judge’s questions ­were often off-­topic, Moussa Dembélé spoke with much greater assurance. He had pay stubs from his job as a bus driver with an open-­ended employment contract, and his tax returns from the previous year showed he had a steady income of 1,300 euros a month. However, Moussa explained, he was responsible for four other ­children and had an overdue rent repayment plan taking 705 euros a month, not to mention overextended consumer credit he was struggling to pay off. His new partner was a part-­time cook’s assistant in a restaurant, earning 700 euros a month. The hearing was supposed to address three points: where Madiaba would live, the f­ ather’s visitation rights, and the amount of child support. The first two ­were resolved in seconds, as it was obvious to both parents that the ­mother should care for the child. It was also clear that an every-­other-­ weekend visitation schedule ­wouldn’t change much, since Moussa already took his son on weekends whenever he could, especially when he d ­ idn’t have to work. The last point—­child support—­was not so readily resolved. “We d ­ on’t call that ‘child support’ among ourselves,” Moussa Dembélé explained. “I send them what they need for school and to eat, it varies from month to month.” The judge nevertheless insisted that he set an amount for each month, and he suggested 100 euros. The judge turned to Fatimata Diakité and asked, “Does that seem fair to you? You asked for 225 euros.” Fatimata explained that her l­imited resources ­were not enough to provide a roof for herself and the children, and protested, “If I was working, I would accept the 100 euros, but now I’m not working!” Judge Anna de Mattéi ended the hearing with the terse and explicit declaration: “He works, he has five ­children. The child support is appropriate to his income, perhaps not to your needs. I think that his offer is fair.”



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  189

The Poverty of Single-­Parent Families Separated working-­class ­mothers with sole custody of their ­children are the primary economic victims of relationship breakdown. Following the definition of Olivier Schwartz, the working classes are characterized by their dominated position in society: a subaltern position at work, ­limited economic resources, and distance from legitimate culture.1 In fact, the working classes include a wide range of social positions, from unemployed ­people living off minimum welfare (like Fatimata Diakité) to late-­c areer wage workers or low-­level civil servants (like Moussa Dembélé) representing the most stable and established fractions. Despite t­ hese significant differences, the breakdown of a marriage-­like relationship in the working classes is always an eco­nom­ically destabilizing ordeal. It can deepen the poverty of the poorest and can also tip into insecurity ­people who had been getting by. This economic weakening mainly concerns ­women. In the working classes also, ­women have more ­limited resources than their partners. In France, the income gap between domestic partners is highest at both ends of the economic spectrum: among the richest ­couples (when one partner makes a lot of money and much more than the other one) but also, more surprisingly, among the most impoverished ­couples. According to a 2011 survey on taxable ­house­hold income, the income gap between men and w ­ omen is very pronounced in the lowest three deciles of income distribution—­the 30 ­percent of ­couples with the lowest combined incomes (­under 30,000 euros per year per ­house­hold).2 The highest proportion of ­women who are unemployed, who are not on the ­labor market and without revenue, or who are working part time, is to be found among the 10 ­percent of ­couples earning less than 17,000 euros per year. In this category, only 11 ­percent of ­women have a full-­time job.3 The breakdown of a relationship thus has devastating effects on the living standards of working-­class w ­ omen, and especially ­t hose with c­ hildren. Eight out of ten single-­parent families in France (according to the official definition) consist of a ­mother raising her child(ren) alone.4 As elsewhere in Eu­rope and in North Amer­i­ca, ­these families are the most likely to experience poverty and insecurity.5 In France, in 2017, a single-­parent f­amily composed of one parent and one child u ­ nder age 14 was considered poor if its monthly income (­after

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taxes and benefits) was below 1,353 euros. This is based on the most widely accepted relative poverty line in Eu­rope, defined at 60 ­percent of the average standard of living.6 By this criterion, 34 ­percent of single-­parent ­house­holds ­were below the poverty line, as compared to 14 ­percent of other ­house­hold types.7 This poverty has very concrete material consequences, particularly where housing is concerned. It is most difficult for single-­parent families to find housing, exemplified so aptly by the experience of Fatimata Diakité and her ­children, h ­ oused for f­ ree by a member of the extended f­ amily in what were prob­ably cramped conditions. Families like this have more trou­ble than any other kind of h ­ ouse­hold (­couples with or without c­ hildren, ­people living alone) in paying their rent, paying bills on time, or living in suitable housing (big enough, adequately heated, in decent condition).8 Aware of this prob­lem, French public housing providers do play a role in compensating for economic inequalities between men and ­women following a separation. Among separating ­couples renting public housing in 2015, 48 ­percent of the ­women kept the ­couple’s former home, as opposed to 37 ­percent of the men. This is far from the situation on the private rental market (with a 10-­point difference in f­ avor of men) or for homeowners (with a 16-­point difference, still in men’s f­ avor).9 Single-­parent families are thus over-­ represented in public housing: in 2006, just ­under 7 ­percent of h ­ ouse­holds in France ­were single-­parent, compared to 16 ­percent of ­those in public housing proj­ects.10 Despite this proactive housing policy, single-­parent families constantly have to tighten their ­belts. ­Every year the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) rec­ords the consumption restrictions of each kind of ­house­hold.11 In 2016, 42 ­percent of single-­parent families lacked the means to pay for a week of vacation away from home (including a stay with ­family or friends); 47 ­percent w ­ ere unable to replace broken furniture; 25  ­percent could not afford to buy new clothing; 18 ­percent did not have the means to eat meat or fish ­every other day; 21  ­percent ­couldn’t afford to have friends or ­family over for dinner; 18 ­percent ­were unable to offer gifts to friends once a year; 16 ­percent ­couldn’t afford two “good” pairs of shoes; 9 ­percent reported not being able to afford to eat a proper meal for at least one full day in the previous two weeks. On all consumption-­related questions, single-­parent families declared the highest rate of deprivation.



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  191

The Beggar and the Good Prince In Eu­rope, the poverty of single-­parent families is considered a social prob­lem that justifies public support ­under the auspices of ­family and social policy.12 Accordingly, the ­family benefits office sent Fatimata Diakité 780 euros a month in assorted benefits to raise her c­ hildren. Seen from North Amer­i­ca, where the safety net for poor single ­mothers is weaker, her position might seem enviable.13 But the welfare state support of working-­ class ­mothers raising c­ hildren alone comes at a cost, b­ ecause ­family law and social agencies operate with a subconscious sexist bias that expects men to be good princes and makes ­women into beggars. It should first be stressed that ­women are twice as likely as men to file a petition for separation in court.14 B ­ ecause they are poorer than their partners and are more likely to have c­ hildren in their care, the breakup leads to immediate bud­getary and housing prob­lems. W ­ omen thus need child support to be set as soon as pos­si­ble. Let’s return to Fatimata Diakité’s situation. Recall that the f­ amily benefits office had made her go to court to have Madiaba’s ­father declared destitute so that she could continue receiving the 90 euros a month in F ­ amily Support Benefits. Ultimately, this did not happen. The outcome of the observed hearing was that the ­father was to take over support to the tune of 100 euros a month as his contribution to rearing and educating his child. We do not know if Fatimata Diakité got this child support, and if she receives it t­oday—­far from a hy­po­t het­i­c al question, as a recent French report found that 20 to 40  ­percent of legally mandated child-­support payments are not made.15 From the beginning of a breakup, working-­class m ­ others are put in the enduring position of beggar: it falls to them to apply to the ­family benefits office for the social benefits to which they are entitled, to go to court to have their child’s ­father declared too poor to pay or to request child support, to file for an annual increase of support, or even to insist on it simply getting paid month a­ fter month. In contrast, men have the option of showing generosity throughout l­egal separation procedures. They can “give” child support, “make a gesture” by paying for exceptional expenses for the c­ hildren (school enrolment costs, braces, extracurricular activities), sometimes “leave” the f­ amily home to their ex, or “grant” her use of their name. For example, even though Moussa

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Dembélé did not make regular formal child-­support payments, he described his contributions in this way: “I send them what they need for school and to eat, it varies from month to month.” Obviously, this posture of generosity is increasingly available to ­fathers the wealthier they are. Working-­class ­fathers strug­gle to incarnate the ideal-­ type figure of the “good prince” who pays ­every red penny of child support, earned by the sweat of his brow. F ­ amily court hearings are often an ordeal for them, rife with symbolic vio­lence. Céline and Sabrina Nouiri-­ Mangold observed a hearing in greater Paris where the f­ ather, a road maintenance worker on a limited-­term contract who earned 1,000 euros a month, took the court’s declaration that he was destitute very badly. He experienced what o­ thers would have considered good news—it excused him from paying child support—as humiliation and shot back, “I feel like I’m on trial ­here!” to the stunned judge, clerk, and observers. When they are unable to shoulder the role of provider imposed by the ­legal system, some men of the working classes experience separation proceedings as a moral challenge to their qualities as a ­father. A few of them simply ­don’t come to the hearing. The absence of working-­ class ­fathers is palpable in postdivorce or extra-­divorce affairs, which have the distinction of only concerning parents (to determine or change physical custody arrangements, visitation and overnight rights, or child-­support payments) and can take place even if only one of them is pre­sent. In 2013, 14.4 ­percent of hearings for such cases ­were attended only by the ­woman, while the reverse situation was much less common (6.5 ­percent of such hearings were attended solely by the man).16 While it was rare for men in managerial jobs that require higher educations to be absent (10.2 ­percent of hearings), it was much more common for male laborers (22.7 ­percent) (see ­Table 7.1).17 Absenteeism is not the only sign of working-­class f­ athers’ distance from ­family courts. Unlike Moussa Dembélé, some show up empty-­handed, without documentation of their employment situation, or ostentatiously demonstrating a “­couldn’t care less attitude.”18 Several f­ actors might explain this be­hav­ior. In most ­couples, the ­woman had always been the one to look ­a fter the c­ hildren and h ­ ouse­hold accounts, well before breakup, so men might see f­amily court ­matters as “a ­woman’s business.” Additionally, working-­class w ­ omen—­especially ­those with a stable job—­are often more comfortable interacting with institutions than men are: they come to the



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  193

­table 7.1. ​Presence of unmarried or divorced parents at the hearing, according to sex category and socioprofessional position

Farm operators Tradespeople, shop­keep­ers, business heads Cadres, higher intellectual profession Intermediary professions Basic employees Laborers Occupation unknown All

­Mothers

­Fathers

Pre­sent at hearing

Pre­sent at hearing

No

Yes

Number

No

Yes

Number

4.8%

95.2%

0 21

20.0% 80.0% 17.3% 82.7%

5 98

6.9%

93.1%

159

10.2% 89.8%

245

7.5% 9.5% 11.1% 20.0% 12.1%

92.5% 90.5% 88.9% 80.0% 87.9%

228 419 81 405 1,313

12.7% 87.3% 19.4% 80.6% 22.7% 77.3% 33.8% 66.2% 19.9% 80.1%

166 217 375 207 1,313

Data source: “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (for information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H). Field: Procedures in 2013 involving parents who w ­ ere already divorced or had never been married, for which ­t here was a hearing and for which the presence or absence of one or both parents was mentioned in the file. N = 1,313. Read: Within this field, 22.7 ­percent of ­fathers who are laborers ­were absent at the hearing. Note: We considered 1,374 child-­related cases involving unmarried or already divorced parents finalized in 2013. We have information on parental presence or absence at the hearing for 1,313 of ­t hese cases. For the remaining 61 cases, e­ ither this information is absent or the case was closed before the hearing occurred (­because a parent withdrew his or her request, one of the parents died, e­ tc.). For a pre­sen­ta­tion of how sex category and socioprofessional position w ­ ere coded, see Statistical Appendix L.

hearing with neatly or­ga­nized files and are deeply invested in the procedure, for which some have prepared in advance with their regular case workers at the ­family benefits office.19 This ease is socially l­imited, however: for instance, Fatimata Diakité arrived in France as an adult and did not speak French well enough or have sufficient understanding of the behavioral codes that should be a­ dopted in relating to institutions (she was barefoot during the hearing) to be able to use this resource common to ­women of the established working classes. If working-­class men are more disposed to protesting this “­women’s law” or avoiding it by absenteeism, it is also and above all ­because their living standards are much less likely to drop a­ fter the breakup than are t­ hose of their ex. Indeed, ­family courts try at any cost to preserve working-­class men’s financial in­de­pen­dence and their position as worker and breadwinner for any potential new f­ amily, even sometimes to the detriment of the living

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standards of their ex-­partner and their ­children. Judge Anna de Mattéi stated this succinctly: “He works, he has five c­ hildren. The child support is appropriate to his income, perhaps not to your needs. I think that his offer is fair.”

Child Support Commensurate with the ­Father’s Income A reminder: in France, f­ athers are the designated payers of child support in 97 ­percent of all separations with child-­support provisions, so when discussing the topic we can speak in terms of debtor ­fathers and creditor ­mothers.20 From a l­egal standpoint, the amount of child support ­fathers pay depends on three equally weighted par­ameters: the f­ ather’s resources, the ­mother’s resources, and the estimated needs of the child. According to Article 371-2 of the French Civil Code, “Each one of the parents s­ hall contribute to the education and support of ­children in proportion to [his] means, to ­t hose of the other parent and to the needs of the child,” yet court practices setting the level of child support are quite dif­fer­ent.21 Econometric analy­sis of ­family court judges’ determinations of child support shows that the sum depends mostly on the debtor f­ ather’s income.22 This statistical finding at the national level aligns with our ethnographic observations.23 First of all, judges approve previously developed agreements between parents, even when t­ hese agreements seem unfair or untenable over the long term. The ­father’s available income—or rather the sum that he is actually prepared to pay—is the determining f­actor in the voluntary agreements that are then legitimated by the court. Judges also try to bring parties into agreement during hearings, especially when the gap between the request and the offer is small. When parties ­can’t agree on the amount of child support—as happens in nearly half of all separation cases and three of four that go to court—­ family court judges ­will first study the ­father’s solvency by adding up his income and so-­called irreducible expenses (housing costs such as rent or mortgage payments, utilities), automotive expenses, and sometimes current consumer loans. One ­factor is notably absent from the court’s chosen criteria: the resources and living conditions of m ­ others responsible for ­children. As Anna de Mattéi put it to Fatimata Diakité, “The child support is appropriate to his income, perhaps not to your needs.”



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  195

In one in three cases, the ­family court judge determines that the ­father is too poor to pay child support and exempts him of the obligation.24 This heavy proportion of exempted ­fathers is tied to the existence of ­Family Support Benefits (allocation de soutien familial) in France, which u ­ nder certain conditions can fill in for parents who cannot afford their support obligations. At the time of the Collectif Onze’s research in the courts (2008–2012), the ­Family Support Benefit was set at approximately 90 euros per month per child, which in practice set a baseline for child-­support payments, as most f­ amily court judges thought it better for m ­ others to receive this benefit regularly than to award them less reliable child support. The obligation to pay child support used to apply only to f­ athers whose incomes w ­ ere above the official national minimum wage, but this has since changed. The ­Family Support Benefit was raised in 2013 (it is currently 115 euros per month per child) and since April 2016 it has been pos­si­ble to receive partial supplementary F ­ amily Support Benefits when the child-­support payment set by the judge is below this baseline. This mea­sure was specifically designed to encourage judges to set small child-­ support contributions as a way to strengthen working-­class f­athers’ engagement in their c­ hildren’s upkeep and education.25

­Fathers Work, ­Mothers Are Available The existence of ­Family Support Benefits is not the only reason that so few working-­class f­athers pay child support, or that it is so low. ­Family court judges believe that when an unemployed ­father finds work, and thus shifts from welfare recipient to actively employed, it should not lead to a higher child-­support payment that would deprive him of the fruits of his ­labor. Men’s incomes are preserved b­ ecause men’s work is ascribed a par­tic­u­lar moral value. It is considered in the child’s best interest to maintain the image of a ­father who works and earns his living—­the twin conditions of masculine dignity. Two hours ­after Moussa Dembélé and Fatimata Diakité’s hearing before judge Anna de Mattéi, another c­ ouple entered her chambers. Ariane Boulin and Fernando Martinez ­were the divorced parents of two ­children, aged 9 and 11. Ariane Boulin petitioned for reconsideration of the shared custody in the divorce agreement, which only dated back a few months. “Actually, the ­children are more often at my place. When they are with

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him, he leaves early and comes home late, ­they’re left on their own.” She wanted her home designated as the ­children’s official residence and child support set accordingly. As a municipal employee in charge of urban and school planning, Ariane earned 2,180 euros per month, more than her ex, who was an electrician earning 1,300 euros per month. Fernando had just found a new job that required he leave around 7:00 a.m. and return around 7:00 p.m., given the distance from his home to the worksites. The audience ­didn’t go as Ariane Boulin had hoped. Judge Anna de Mattéi was initially quite reluctant to end the shared residential custody: several times she asked Ariane if she could take the c­ hildren an hour in the morning before school and an hour in the eve­ning before their ­father returned from work on weeks when he had custody, to which Ariane firmly replied no. Ariane Boulin also wondered why her request of child support (of 500 euros per month for both ­children) was rejected, and why Fernando Martinez was declared destitute when he had a job and an income: “If he’s not able to pay half the expenses, it’s up to me to do it?” she objected. “It’s also in the c­ hildren’s interest to see the f­ ather manage to pull through when he used to be [on welfare]. He bounced back, the gentleman has nothing to be ashamed of,” the judge declared. When f­ athers’ desire to find work and contribute if pos­si­ble to the support of their ­children seems genuine, judges tend to protect their income from overly burdensome debts, especially if they might destabilize a delicate situation. The flip side of this moral esteem of f­ athers’ work is the ever-­ presumed availability of ­mothers to take care of their ­children. The obviousness of the maternal role of ­women and its corollary, the unconditional adjustment of their c­ areers to their c­ hildren’s needs, appears crudely in a few unusual cases where m ­ others cite professional constraints when asking that ­fathers get more invested in parenting. Judge Sandrine Cabernet was deeply troubled by one such request. She was about 30 at the time we met and had been a f­ amily court judge in a major urban area for two months, ­after an initial experience as a judge for juvenile affairs. She was married to a sales man­ag­er whom she described as consumed by his work, and they had two preschool-­age ­children. She worked an 80 ­percent week (four days instead of five). All this is impor­tant to understanding her assessment of ­family court cases, as she described it to Élodie Hennequin and Alina Surubaru, members of the research team.



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  197

sandrine cabernet: I’m always surprised by the dads, in a way they ­really try super hard despite every­thing to take their child, even when they have [demanding] jobs. Well, sometimes it’s not ­every Wednesday, it’s one Wednesday a month, but still, I think that’s still a good effort, b­ ecause, well, you ­can’t always do what you want, and I think that leads to sacrifices of a financial nature for them, too. . . . alina surubaru: And this morning, that lady who explained, “I have to work, he has to take him more often,” did you hear that before? sandrine cabernet: She ­really surprised me, that one! I had the impression that her kid was a hot potato, like she had to get rid of him to go to work. That kind of made me . . . ​I was this close to telling her . . . ​but I thought, OK, she’s annoyed, let’s not compound the situation. But I was shocked, personally. B ­ ecause, well, I do understand that it has its difficulties for her, but the t­ hing is that, other single moms, I mean, gotta figure it out, you know, child care. . . . ​I tell you, she shocked me, it made me . . . ​[sighed]. . . . ​If it had been the ­father I ­would’ve been more. . . . ​It’s sexist of me, but anyway, it’s true that I’d have been more understanding.

Even though “co-­parenting” has been a structuring princi­ple of ­family law since the early 2000s (in France as elsewhere in the world), judges’ expectations of f­ athers and m ­ others are still quite distinct.26 While ­fathers’ jobs and incomes are protected, and ­fathers are praised for looking ­a fter the ­children (“a good effort”), ­mothers are supposed to be permanently available for their ­children and make up for their f­ athers’ absences. This brings to mind the late-­c areer judge Dominique Bernay-­Chatel, whom we met in Chapter 6, who “­couldn’t count too much” on the help of her husband (also a judge) for help with ­house­work and who presented the hiring of a full-­time ­house­keeper as a personal victory. The same goes for l­awyers specialized in f­amily law. Such c­ areers lead them to value the reconciliation of paid employment and investment in child-­rearing, without necessarily appreciating the cost for ­women of lesser means, who can rarely afford professional child care.

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­ ese ­lawyers and judges sometimes forget that ­women’s ability to reconTh cile the two is heavi­ly dependent on their economic, cultural, and social resources, as well as the kind of support they can muster from friends and ­family. More or less consciously, such l­egal professionals lend legitimacy to the idea that it is normal for ­women’s paid work to be subordinate to their primary role—­child-­rearing—­regardless of their social background. This was apparent in a case observed by Céline and Aurélie Fillod-­ Chabaud in a small court in a rural part of eastern France. Ahmed Bensaïd, a 47-­year-­old Algerian man, and Kadidja Hattoub, a 39-­year-­old Moroccan ­woman, attended a conciliation hearing with judge Etienne Paletot, accompanied by two young female l­awyers. They had a 3-­year-­old ­daughter and had been living apart for ten months, since Ahmed had been convicted of domestic vio­lence. Ahmed had been living with his m ­ other since then, while Khadidja and their ­daughter remained in the ­family home. Ahmed had been the one to file the petition for divorce; despite the vio­lence, Kadidja said she ­wasn’t “ready” to divorce ­because the separation put her in a difficult material situation, due to the fact that ­house­hold resources came almost entirely from her husband’s income as a truck driver (1,700 euros per month). Ahmed’s l­awyer opened the discussion: “­There is at least one point of agreement on the subject of the child: that’s joint parental authority, maternal custody, amicable every-­other-­weekend visitation rights, weeks one, three, five, Saturday 11 a.m., Sunday 7 p.m., provided that the gentleman enjoys use of the shared vehicle.” “I work! I get up at 3 a.m. Monday to Saturday, I need a vehicle!,” Ahmed added. Kadidja cut him off: “So if he works, I ­can’t work!” She stated that she would never be able to find a new job without a car. Her ­lawyer explained that Kadidja had had a limited-­term employment contract as an assembly worker that had not been renewed, and that she did ­house­cleaning to make ends meet while on unemployment and had paid dearly for a security agent training program so she could find a new job. Her l­awyer also responded to the proposal on visitation rights: “The gentleman waives visitation rights for Friday nights. To the contrary, the lady proposes the usual schedule of Friday night through Sunday night. It’s nice for a f­ ather to have his d ­ aughter one more night!” The f­ ather protested that he worked Saturday mornings: “What am I supposed to do? For now it’s all right b­ ecause I’m at my ­mother’s, but what am I supposed to do when I have my own place?” “You could get a sitter!” the l­awyer shot back. The



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  199

­ other fumed to herself, “He’s irresponsible. . . . ​W hat am I supposed to m do, me, ­every day, to find work?” This hearing reveals the gap between Kadidja’s l­awyer’s social universe of reference (where one can reconcile working and f­ amily life by delegating the latter to an employee: “You could get a sitter!”) and the social universes of p ­ eople with l­imited resources who have gone to court, for whom this possibility is out of reach. It also contains an assumption expressed by Ahmed’s ­lawyer that the m ­ other should be responsible for child care the first part of the weekend by default, to make up for her ex-­husband’s professional obligations. Once again, men’s remunerated work is vaunted and protected while the exploitation of ­women’s unpaid domestic ­labor is legitimated. A ­father may have his visitation rights reduced if he works on Saturday and is not available to take care of his ­children the entire weekend, while am ­ other is supposed to arrange her employment schedule primarily around her ­children, and her requests for financial compensation for that situation are not considered legitimate. In practice, such biases have major economic consequences. It means that the child-­rearing expenses borne by ­mothers (with whom the c­ hildren live) are not included in the calculations, let alone compensation for the loss of income tied to reduced paid employment to look ­after ­children.

Child-­Support Criteria ­Don’t Account for ­Mothers’ Sacrifices The criteria for calculating child support leave out the opportunity cost of ­mothers raising ­children day to day. In the language of economists, “opportunity cost” means a lack of earnings; in this case, a ­mother’s lack of earnings arises from the need to reduce her paid working time to raise her ­children alone. Indexing child support solely on the ­father’s income leads judges to ignore the cost of this parental role specialization ­after separation, even though it also means lower revenues for ­women responsible for ­children. This practice has even become an explicit rule since the French Ministry of Justice produced guidelines for determining the level of child support in 2010. ­These guidelines are nonbinding and judges are ­free to set any amount they see fit, but they are publicly available in the form of a “simulator” on the website of the Ministry of Justice.27

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Although Article 271-2 of the Civil Code cites three unranked f­actors for setting the amount of contributions to raising and educating c­ hildren (income of each parent and needs of the child), the guidelines set support solely as a percentage of the noncustodial parent’s income. Child support is simply calculated as a percentage of this income (from which is subtracted a “living minimum”) and weighted by two other criteria: how significant visitation and overnight rights are (child support is raised if this time is short, lowered if physical custody is split equally) and the number of ­children. In the classic visitation rights schedule (alternate weekends and half of school vacations), child support for one child is 13.5 ­percent of the debtor ­father’s income, two times 11.5  ­percent for two ­children, and 10 ­percent per child for three. ­Fathers’ ability to pay is thus the primary ­factor in child-­support calculations. ­Mothers’ living conditions and resources are irrelevant to the simulator. How is this choice justifiable? First of all, the criteria are relatively consistent with ­legal pre­ce­dent. Rather than correcting the subconscious sexism in judges’ practices, the guideline’s developers used it as a reference. Secondly, its developers started with the baseline assumption that the cost of raising c­ hildren could be approached as a proportion of parental income.28 This metric for the cost of a child is rooted in an econometric tradition ­going back to the end of World War II, when public policies fighting poverty ­were implemented. This tradition assimilated the cost of a child to the additional income a f­ amily with a child would need to have the same living standards as a f­ amily without a child. Since the late 1990s, INSEE has used what it calls the “OECD-­modified equivalence scale,” which uses h ­ ouse­hold consumption surveys to determine the level of additional income that would be needed to bring the consumption pattern of h ­ ouse­holds with c­ hildren 29 into line with h ­ ouse­holds without c­ hildren. ­These conventions ­were the basis of the French Ministry of Justice’s criteria for establishing the proportion of parental income dedicated to ­children. The cost of a child is taken to be the sum of a given proportion of the ­mother’s income and the ­father’s income. The latter is what is asked of f­ athers in the form of child support (see the following box). ­There are two major prob­lems with this way of calculating child support. For one, it is based on an eminently debatable and indeed debated assessment of the cost of a child. In July 2015 the High Council for the ­Family published a report that stressed the challenge of identifying variations in the cost of a child according to overall f­ amily wealth.30 Supporting



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  201

Modeling the cost of a child, as determined by the authors of the Ministry of Justice’s t­ able for calculating contributions to the education and support of a child. Given Ce the cost of the child, Yf the m ­ other’s income, and Yh the ­father’s income: Ce = α (Yf + Yh) = αYf + αYh

this report are ethnographic studies demonstrating that parents in working-­ class h ­ ouse­holds make sacrifices for their c­ hildren that involve bud­getary items that statistical surveys typically identify as collective—­especially food.31 For example, a parent w ­ ill gives up their piece of cake so that their child can have it. Since the total cost of ­family needs is underestimated, so is the cost of the child. While this statistically invisible cost is potentially borne by both parents when they are living together, it is exclusively borne by the custodial parent (usually the m ­ other) ­after separation. The second prob­lem with the way that the Ministry of Justice’s guidelines calculate child support is that they do not account for the opportunity cost to w ­ omen of raising c­ hildren—­that is, all the missed c­ areer and earning opportunities entailed. Raising ­children has consequences on the incomes of both parents. While parents are living together, the opportunity cost is somewhat shared, and the overall h ­ ouse­hold income is affected. But a­ fter separation, the custodial ­mother bears it alone. The value of ­women’s professional as well as domestic ­labor is still largely absent from ­legal discussions over the amount of child-­support payments. The domestic ­labor provided by ­women is not considered to be a contribution to the education and support of ­children: it’s taken for granted. Similarly, the opportunity cost of this domestic ­labor in professional terms is not included in the estimated cost of a child: neither judges nor the child-­support guidelines take much account of custodial m ­ others’ ­careers and incomes. The guidelines thus ignore the economic sacrifices of ­mothers raising their ­children alone by failing to take account of both the consumption sacrifices they make for their c­ hildren and the c­ areer and income sacrifices linked to child-­rearing. Legitimated by a simplistic econometric model that makes it difficult to challenge, the setting of child-­support payments in con­temporary France is but another case of reversed accounting. While l­egal texts should prompt

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a discussion of the overall cost of ­children, and then of how this cost could be split between parents, in practice it’s the ­father’s available income, and his income alone, that determines the calculation. Although both parents have to provide the court with documentation of their resources and expenses, the apparent symmetry of ­these files obfuscates the hierarchy of priorities dominating child-­support calculations. The only impor­tant question in court is how much the f­ ather can pay.

When F ­ athers ­Don’t Pay Their Child Support Although child support is largely set according to the noncustodial parent’s income, the latter is not subject to intensive scrutiny. F ­ amily court judges may call upon accountants to assess the situation, but in practice judges rarely do so b­ ecause of their practical conviction that pressing for an investigation would be too costly to separating individuals (especially ­t hose in the working or ­middle classes) and would drag out the pro­cess too much. Take the example of a hearing that Céline and Jérémy Mandin observed in greater Paris in March 2009, when a rare ­thing happened: one of the parties tacitly acknowledged that he had not declared all of his income. A tradesman in the construction sector, Jacques Dubois had petitioned the ­family court to reduce the child-­support payments (set at 275 euros per month per child) to his ex-­partner, Myriam Abbadi, for the care of their two ­children. His petition included the following: “Without income since July 2007, due to the cessation of my activity (removed from the directory of trades ­because of insufficient assets) and unable to find a steady job, I have signed up with several temp agencies and I have had a few jobs that are not enough to allow me to apply the order of the judgment issued May 14, 2007. This is why I am asking for the cancellation of child-­support payments and previously due sums.” At the hearing, Jacques Dubois exhibited a distanced posture that we saw often among working-­class men in court: wrapped in his green parka, he was slumped in his chair and reluctantly replied to the questions of judge Yves Defert. Unlike Jacques, Myriam Abbadi sat straight in her chair and spoke with assurance, regularly consulting her files, which she kept at the ready. We learned that she was a sales representative for a produce w ­ holesaler and earned approximately 1,200 euros a month. She was indignant at the



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request of her ex-­partner, whom she solemnly referred to by his ­family name: “He used to be a cabinetmaker. He buys ­things, he takes the plane to go work on the Côte d’Azur, where he is building a ­house. Mr. Dubois turned in his tradesman’s card to avoid paying expenses. H ­ e’ll only work for 2,000 euros, other­wise he prefers to stay home”; “Since December, Mr. Dubois cannot take the c­ hildren b­ ecause he is working too much, but he declares very ­little [of his income]. In contrast, I am honest, I declare every­thing and I live in insecurity.” Myriam Abbadi accused Jacques of planning his impoverishment with the objective of avoiding paying child support. The man did not deny it. He openly described himself as an “antisocial [person] who ­doesn’t accept the system.” Upon hearing this, Myriam pressed on: “Mr. Dubois drives a Jeep. His gasoline consumption is the equivalent of my monthly salary.” She eventually told the judge that she was thinking of appealing to an external auditor. “What for?” queried judge Yves Defert. Taken aback, Myriam Abbadi stammered, “An inspector, to examine his accounting,” then turned to her ex to address him directly: “I d ­ on’t sponge off ­people! And above all, I’m honest!” Interviewed shortly ­after the hearing, Yves Defert remarked on his difficulty coming to a decision in this case. yves defert: The limitation is that he ­will never give in. He ­won’t budge an inch. . . . ​I mean that taking investigative mea­sures with this guy, who ­will do as he pleases regardless. . . . ​He hides all his income. So I ­don’t know. You see, when p ­ eople hide their income like that, you ­can’t force it open. Or convict. Regardless, they w ­ on’t pay or ­they’ll put themselves in situations so as not to pay that are completely. . . . ​­Because, when she says he drives an SUV, et cetera, et cetera, I’m certain that it’s true! I’m sure he has money. The ­thing is that . . . ​in this case, it’s complicated, the documents just ­aren’t t­ here. jérémy mandin: But still, ­doesn’t it bother you to put . . . ​I mean, it does raise some prob­lems when you must decide the level of child support. . . . yves defert: Yes, but the ­thing is, if you decide according to what you think is true, and not according to the ele­ments you have at hand, it never works. That’s it. You can feel it at

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a hearing, ­there are ­people who or­ga­nize their impoverishment, for example. In the beginning that’s what I did, I’d start wrangling with guys who or­ga­nized their impoverishment. In the end, every­one loses, it’s ­really . . . ​no ­matter what, the guy ­doesn’t pay, the enforcement procedures ­don’t work. Then it ends up in appeals court, I mean, it puts ­people in absolutely horrible situations. . . . ​I d ­ on’t know if you know how it works, but if she then sues him [for nonpayment of child support], the prosecutor could go a­ fter him and he could find himself in criminal court for child abandonment. That’s a lot of trou­ble, especially ­going before the criminal judge.

In his decision ten days ­later, the judge observed that Jacques Dubois was “not in the state to pay a contribution to the support and education of his ­children” and canceled his child-­support obligation. As Florence Weber has stressed, the moral condemnation of work u ­ nder the ­table is above all “horizontal,” meaning it takes place among ­people of a comparable status, and not between high and low rungs of the social scale.32 From their lofty position, f­amily court judges are indifferent to practices like this, and have neither the time nor desire to investigate it more deeply. Very few cases lead to criminal prosecution. And yet failure to support is indeed a crime. According to Article 227-3 of the French Penal Code, the offense is committed when a person does not perform his or her support obligation and incurs a penalty of two years of prison and 15,000 euros in fines. In practice, however, the courts are largely inactive on the issue. In 2014, Céline and Muriel Mille attended a conference on child support held by the Toulouse Bar, in southwestern France. Late in the after­ noon a juvenile court prosecutor made a pre­sen­ta­tion entitled “The Offense of Failure to Support” before an audience of ­family ­lawyers. She clearly had not prepared much for her talk, which was very short. She indicated straightaway that “the level of prosecution is very low,” and that Toulouse courts, like most ­others, “try to get the payments made rather than pursue the offense.” She outlined the conditions for no further action being taken and explained that criminal mediation procedures ­were a preferred solution. At the end of her pre­sen­ta­tion, the ­lawyer who had or­ga­nized the conference



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  205

expressed her concern over the “significant rate of nonpayment of child support” and the “impoverishment of single-­parent families”; she asked why ­there ­wasn’t “a more rigorous criminal policy” for such cases. The prosecutor gave a straight reply: the court is reluctant to consider “­t hese bad payers as ordinary delinquents.” Evoking her previous experience as a ­family court judge, she gave her opinion that nonpayment stems “from a wider context,” notably parental conflict. She suggested that unpaid child support compensated for the difficulties some f­athers have in getting to see their ­children. This remark raised an outcry and considerable hubbub in the room, and several l­awyers (all ­women) loudly protested: “That argument is a bit too easy! The complaints ­aren’t even upheld!” “Child support ­isn’t paid and suspicion still falls on the m ­ others!” One l­awyer declared in agitation: “You know how distressed ­women who ­don’t get their child support are! You speak of mediation, but mediation is of no use at this stage, when ­you’ve already tried every­thing, the only way to recover the money is through public prosecution!” The prosecutor was unconvinced: “Prosecution leads nowhere!” Another ­lawyer described how she had filed a complaint several times but had ultimately given up; to her thinking, “the public prosecutor ends up defending the interests of the ­father who is a bad payer.” A ­family court judge asked if ­there w ­ ere any national-­level figures on the number of complaints and prosecutions. The prosecutor acknowledged that she did not know the statistics and dodged the question by retorting, “I’m trying to tell you that prosecution ­doesn’t fix the prob­lem!” The French Ministry of Justice recently conducted a study of p ­ eople who had divorced in the previous two years. It found that among the quarter of them who had declared experiencing nonpayment of child support, 38 ­percent claimed to have initiated payment actions, meaning that they personally paid an enforcement agent to request that the nonpayer’s wages or bank accounts be garnisheed; only 12 ­percent filed for failure to support.33 In November 2013, Céline attended hearings at a major criminal court in metropolitan Paris that handled this offense, among o­ thers (­family vio­ lence being another major issue). In an interview, the presiding judge, Benoît Artigues, explained that appearing in criminal court for failure to support was the very last resort: “It makes sense, in f­amily settings, to implement mediation, to have criminal mediators intervene. We try to reconcile p ­ eople. Someone who ­doesn’t pay or ­hasn’t paid child support, b­ ecause ­there is a

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dispute or ­because he ­can’t, we ­don’t send him right away before the court. We have to check up on ­things, ­there are also appeals, ­there are requests to adjust child support . . . ​so all that takes time. We try to not send a f­ ather before the court b­ ecause he c­ an’t afford it.” The only f­athers to be sent before the court are ­those who do not pay child support while they clearly have the means to do so. Given how long and complex the procedure is, unpaid balances add up over several years, leading to a b­ attle of dates and figures. For instance, one case we observed involved a ­father, occupation unknown, who earned 2,050 euros per month plus bonuses but who refused to pay support for his ­daughter (220 euros per month), no longer a minor, despite several court rulings confirming that she was still in her unemployed m ­ other’s charge. The ­mother’s l­awyer estimated the accumulated damages at 17,056 euros (she had received only 2,394 of the 19,450 euros she was owed). Judge Benoît Artigues specified that the court had only taken the period from October 1, 2006, to January 1, 2011, into account, and thought that it was not up to him to rule on the recovery of all child support. In fact, the main stake of such hearings is not economic. The prosecutor asked for a suspended sentence of three months in prison. Benoît Artigues solemnly rendered his decision: Sir, you are hereby found guilty. You have demonstrated bad faith in support of your d ­ aughter. I remind you that in the Civil Code, it is a natu­ral obligation to support one’s ­children when they are not in­de­pen­dent. . . . ​You are condemned to one month of prison with a suspended sentence. Is your ­daughter in­de­pen­dent t­oday? You d ­ on’t even know—­which is revealing of how interested you are in your ­daughter. And if this continues, you ­will have a new complaint filed against you, and then it w ­ ill be prison. Madam has presented herself as a civil party, which is admissible. You are condemned to give her 1,000 euros for moral damages in addition to the 800 euros ­under Article 475-1. Furthermore, the court cannot enforce the recovery of child support and arrears; that w ­ ill happen before the f­ amily affairs judge.

The main stake of the criminal procedure is thus making a solemn reminder of the law, frightening f­athers who are bad payers by confronting them with the possibility of prison and acknowledging the existence of



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  207

moral damages. From an economic perspective, the criminal ruling adds another ele­ment to the (female) creditor’s toolkit for pursuing the garnishing of her ex-­partner’s wages—­but her uphill ­battle for recovering unpaid child support is far from over.

Recovering Unpaid Child Support: A New Mission for the F ­ amily Benefits Office? In September 2019, the creation of a new French public ser­vice for the disbursement of child support was announced with g­ reat media fanfare by Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet, accompanied by Secretary of State for Solidarity Christelle Dubos and Secretary of State for the Equality of Men and ­Women, Marlène Schiappa.34 This reform was presented as a response to the economic demands of the ­women raising ­children alone who ­were occupying traffic circles in the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement. As of June 2020, upon the request of the parents and as soon as the divorce or separation is finalized, the ­family benefits office can act as intermediary, seizing the sum on the debtor parent’s bank account and transferring it to the beneficiary parent, thus helping to reduce contact between the parents (especially impor­tant when t­here is domestic vio­lence) and to avoid nonpayment. The office may also pursue recovery procedures for a period up to twenty-­four months upon the request of the creditor when payments are in arrears. In the meantime, it may also provide a F ­ amily Support Benefit of 115 euros per month per child if the custodial parent is single. This program was extended in 2021 to include all parents who ask to join, including ­those who have already been separated for a long time. Although it was presented as a revolution, in fact this system largely existed already. Since 2014, twenty local ­family benefits offices had been experimenting with a guarantee against unpaid child support, thus reinforcing their roles in support recovery. This role was strengthened in January 2017 by the creation of a national-­level child-­support collection agency within the national f­amily benefits office organ­ization. The only novelty in 2019 was the publicity for this previously little-­k nown system, and the fact that the ­family benefits offices could henceforth assume an intermediary role from the moment of l­egal separation (and not just in situations of acknowledged nonpayment).

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Sociologist Émilie Biland studied the establishment of this child-­support collection agency in real time, following the announcements of all po­liti­cal stripes from 2012 to 2021 and how the program advanced through vari­ous bodies of the state. She consulted e­ very report concerning the reform and interviewed the high-­ranking civil servants who backed it as well as feminist activists who had publicly expressed their opinion on the subject and some who ­hadn’t. Biland concludes that t­ hese recent initiatives to address unpaid child support are ­little more than “window-­dressing.”35 In 2017, only 10 ­percent of the victims of unpaid child support had actually called on the ­family benefits office for help.36 One study of benefit recipients conducted by the national f­amily benefits office itself admitted that the procedure for requesting the ­Family Support Benefit was quite complicated and the administration’s extremely high demands strongly discouraged ­women who ­were owed unpaid child support.37 Émilie Biland also shows that most feminist organ­izations are not very active on the issue: they are ­either focused on vio­lence against w ­ omen or simply did not participate in discussions concerning the establishment of a child-­support collection agency. Founded in 2012, the feminist collective F ­ amily Abandonment–­Z ero Tolerance (Abandon de Famille–­Tolérance Zéro) is one of the few groups to take a public position against the “economic abuse of ­women and ­children” that can occur in separations. One of its cofound­ers, Stéphanie Lamy, regrets the inadequacies of the child-­support collection agency in any of its forms. She denounces the fact that the ­family benefits office only pays the F ­ amily Support Benefit in lieu of unpaid child support if the separated ­mother is not living with a new partner: “So this means that ­women are e­ ither wards of a state administration or wards of a partner.”38 She also bemoans the time it takes for the ­family benefits office to pro­cess requests for this benefit, which can take months, and the fact that it is mutually exclusive with other civil procedures: “If entitled beneficiaries have already resorted to other civil recovery procedures—­the tax administration or an enforcement officer—­t hey do not have any right to the ­Family Support Benefit. Inversely, it is impossible to hire an enforcement officer when ­there’s an active file at the ­family benefits office.”39 Her last complaint is that the system is not automatic—it is put in place solely upon the demand of the creditor, therefore trapping ­women in the position of “whiners” who are responsible for all the administrative work to recover their dues: “All re-



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  209

quests should be undertaken by the one who owes the money, and not ­mothers who are already alone and moreover have to take care of the ­children.”  40 Other policy choices are pos­si­ble. The Canadian province of Quebec is always cited as an example ­because it was a pioneer in establishing a public system of child-­support collection in 1975. It handed over this task to the tax administration, which is more dissuasive and binding for f­athers who ­don’t pay their child support (especially ­those in the higher classes).41 By choosing the ­family benefits office over the tax administration and by continuing to implement t­ hese mea­sures solely upon the demand of creditors, the French state still puts w ­ omen on the front line of interactions with the administration and in a supplicatory position, while protecting the incomes of working-­class men. In practice, the f­amily benefits office’s child-­support collection system is l­imited to the working classes. B ­ ecause the office manages most social welfare benefits (including the Active Solidarity Income and housing subsidies), it may be familiar with the overall situations of both parents when they are both beneficiaries; this is how working-­class ­fathers’ formal incomes come u ­ nder surveillance.42 This is not so for middle-­and upper-­ class ­fathers, who have ­little or no business with the ­family benefits office and whose incomes are more difficult to trace.43 Moreover, the office’s child-­ support collection system is less appealing to middle-­and upper-­class ­women, who likely already receive child-­support payments higher than the 115 euros per month per child offered by the ­Family Support Benefit, and the collection agency does not make up for the difference between the amount of child support set by ­family court judges and the fixed amount of the ­Family Support Benefit.

Controlling ­Women’s Bud­gets and Sexuality Since the publication of Marcel Mauss’s The Gift, anthropology has taught us that the gift elevates its giver and lowers the receiver.44 ­A fter the breakup of a marriage-­like relationship in the working classes, many men lack the means to attain the generous position of giver. Many w ­ omen ­don’t dare claim what is rightfully theirs and prefer to live in difficult material conditions rather than continue this power relationship with their exes. They turn to social welfare administrations to subsidize their and their ­children’s needs

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instead. In France this is first and foremost the ­family benefits office b­ ecause it offers specific welfare benefits for single-­parent families. Public re­distribution partly compensates for the gender economic inequalities among the working classes in France. M ­ others impoverished by a separation are taken into charge by the welfare state. At the dawn of the 1980s, the low level of actually paid support was attributed to men’s economic prob­lems (unemployment and the wage insecurity that had begun with the economic crisis) and the creation of specific allowances for single-­ parent families was seen as an alternative to establishing an unpaid child-­ support collection system and debating how high this support should be in princi­ple.45 The same perspective informed the guidelines for setting child benefit payments when they w ­ ere established by the Ministry of Justice in 2010. Compared to existing case law, they further reduced poor ­fathers’ child-­support payments—­generally paid to poor ­mothers—­because of the notion that social assistance should be coming to the aid of m ­ others in difficulty instead. The situation is quite dif­fer­ent in the United States, where separated working-­class w ­ omen suffer even more than their French counter­parts from the neoliberal turn in social policy while not receiving significant economic contributions from their exes.46 According to the US Census Bureau report Custodial M ­ others and F ­ athers and Their Child Support: 2017, the proportion of custodial parents who w ­ ere supposed to receive support, but ­didn’t, increased from 24.2 ­percent in 1993 to 30.2 ­percent in 2017. Custodial parents who w ­ ere young, never-­married, Black, and poorly educated ­were much less likely to receive support to which they ­were entitled, and even when they did receive some payments, they w ­ ere less likely to receive the full amount.47 Seen from the United States, where working-­class men—­ especially Black ones—­are criminalized when they ­can’t manage to pay their child support, the situation in France might seem satisfactory.48 But upon closer examination, French-­style social and f­ amily support comes at a cost for w ­ omen: it entails state oversight of their private lives through their bud­gets and sexuality. The same is true for the United States, for which John Gilliom demonstrated that the intensity of welfare surveillance varies according to the kind of benefit received, assistance for separated ­mothers being linked to the most invasive surveillance: “Since Social Security assumes need and works with established terms of eligibility and support, case-­by-­c ase scrutiny can be minimized, while AFDC [Aid to



The Particular Hardships of Proletarian Ex-Wives  211

Families with Dependent C ­ hildren], with its emphasis on the individual determination of need, frequent reporting, and ongoing determinations of ‘worthiness,’ is driven to engage in some of the most invasive forms of scrutiny imaginable.” 49 In French f­amily court, it is most often w ­ omen who are supposed to provide bills, bank statements, receipts for medical expenses, and proof of school enrollment and registration for extracurricular activities—­and also justify ­whether ­these expenses are shared with a new partner or not.50 If their ex-­partner is declared destitute, even if he earns twice as much as she does and has no ­children to look ­after, they have to turn to social welfare. But the ­family benefits offices only support ­mothers who are poor (some benefits require proof of inadequate resources) and live alone, and not all poor separated ­mothers: to receive social benefits for a single-­parent ­family, you also have to regularly prove that you are not in a new relationship. What are the consequences of this policy choice? The first is keeping ­women in the position of beggar. While their ­children’s f­ athers are all but exonerated of the payment of child support, m ­ others must bear the full burden of applying to the welfare state for benefits crucial to the ­family’s survival. They perform the bulk of the work of “man­ag­er of the unmanageable,” consisting of keeping a balanced bud­get through the end of the month while depriving their ­children as ­little as pos­si­ble.51 Even though their largest contribution to the upkeep and education of c­ hildren consists in looking ­after them daily, they are the ones who end up in the position of asking for support or an allowance, and who must regularly justify their financial and relationship situations. In the late nineteenth c­ entury, the feminist activist and anarchist Louise Michel wrote in her memoirs: “The proletarian is a slave; the wife of a proletarian is even more a slave.”52 In the early twenty-­first ­century, a time when the separation of domestic partnerships is commonplace, the ex-­wife of the proletarian is still assigned to unpaid domestic ­labor and doomed to financial dependence on the state or a new partner.

Conclusion

W

hile k arl mar x defined class relations according to the division between the few who own productive capital and the many who merely possess their ­labor power, over the course of the twentieth ­century the social hierarchies and relations of exploitation in industrialized countries ­were transformed by the spread of wage-­earning work, connected to educational qualifications. This is why sociologists studied the construction of social relations between classes mainly in terms of work and school. In the early twenty-­first c­ entury, however, differences in living conditions and social status are increasingly tied to the transfer of economic wealth within the ­family. The statistical findings are unequivocal: Wealth inequalities are growing stronger u ­ nder con­temporary capitalism. Some social groups appropriate economic capital and manage to pass it on to their c­hildren, while ­others are durably deprived of it. Exploring the current position of economic capital in mechanisms of social reproduction demands a new approach re-­examining social class through ­family relations and gender inequalities. 212

Conclusion  213

From Capital in the Twenty-­First C ­ entury to the Gender of Capital ­ ntil now the growth of wealth inequalities has mainly been studied by U economists, led by Thomas Piketty. Our book shifts the perspectives of Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century in two ways. First of all, we take a so­cio­log­i­cal perspective, which pays attention to the existence of social classes and makes it pos­si­ble to demonstrate that families of dif­fer­ent social backgrounds relate differently to the law, with consequences on statistical mea­sure­ments of wealth inequalities. The propertied classes with high economic and cultural capital readily use the possibility of not declaring all their assets to the tax administration. They are supported by l­egal and asset-­management professionals who help them pass their assets on to their ­children in the most favorable conditions. The propertied classes who have less cultural capital and are less wealthy have more trou­ble keeping their wealth hidden from the tax administration. Families whose cultural capital is higher than other forms of capital have far fewer options for under-­declaring what they own. Also, the working classes with low cultural and economic capital have particularly vis­i­ble savings that are easily monitored and drained when welfare agencies and the tax administration get involved. As we can see, the socially situated ways in which ­people engage with ­family and property law lead to differences in their mastery over the reporting and officialization of their net worth to public institutions, including how they are mea­sured by national statistical institutions whose wealth surveys rely on self-­reporting. As a result, statistical descriptions of the wealth gap between social classes make it seem smaller than it actually is. Secondly, we take account of the familial dimension of wealth. Economists interested in wealth in­equality focus on wealth at the ­house­hold level, without wondering about how it is distributed among ­house­hold members or how the latter get along. We, on the other hand, wondered who owned and controlled what in the ­house­hold, and why. Unfortunately, self-­reported ­house­hold wealth surveys are not detailed enough to be this precise in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. B ­ ecause of this, most of the research on the gender wealth gap is focused on the comparison of female-­headed and male-­headed single-­adult ­house­holds, or e­ lse on components of individual wealth such as pensions.1

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­ ese studies have made valuable contributions, like showing that single Th ­women with ­children have the lowest levels of overall assets, but household-­ level data collection makes it difficult to assess and explain the extent of the gender wealth gap. This seemingly technical issue is in fact a social issue. ­Family is the “most familiar category” and as such is embedded in numerous institutions, ranging from language to law and welfare policy.2 Researchers using national surveys or tax data to estimate the gender wealth gap are caught up in the cognitive matrix of the ­family, ­because data-­ collection methods tend to conflate the assets accumulated by men and by ­women in the same h ­ ouse­hold. Despite the patchy data due to survey design, we have demonstrated the utility of deconstructing the ­family as unit of observation, as a way to reveal wealth disparities between ­women and men. Our ethnographic work with families further reveals that men and w ­ omen do not have the same power to effectively appropriate what they own. L ­ egal professionals are party to the undervaluation of men’s wealth, and they legitimate unequal divisions of ­family property. The 16 ­percent gap between men and ­women’s wealth that emerged from the French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine), 2014– 2015, is just the tip of the gender-­inequality iceberg. Further quantitative research is needed, focusing on estate planning and conjugal separation and their long-­term effects on the wealth accumulation of men and w ­ omen, in France and elsewhere in the world.

For a Feminist Sociology of the F ­ amily Gender studies has gained in visibility and legitimacy in the social sciences over the past fifty years.3 In France, gender studies became institutionalized only about twenty years ago, at the same time as we ­were working on our degrees and starting our c­ areers.4 Like other female researchers of our generation, “at the same time and with the same enthusiasm” we appropriated a variety of theories rooted in dif­fer­ent academic cultures without always perceiving at first the epistemological and po­liti­cal divisions between approaches, be they “Marxist feminist,” “materialist,” “poststructuralist,” “queer,” or other.5 Early in our academic c­ areers (around the year 2000, in both France and the United States), we w ­ ere taught gender scholarship from Anglophone countries while reading French feminist work haphazardly on our own. Having read Joan Scott’s foundational text “Gender: A Useful

Conclusion  215

Category of Historical Analy­sis,” we fought to change the fields of research in which we w ­ ere establishing ourselves (sociology of the ­family, economic sociology, sociology of ­family businesses and self-­employment, and so on) by using the lens of gender and thinking of it as a power relation. Once we had found secure university and research positions, we ­were able to take an openly feminist approach in our research and teaching without our academic merits being discredited as “activist,” as was too often the case for ­earlier generations in France.6 One of the most essential contributions of gender studies is revealing and contesting androcentric imprints on knowledge.7 Like all critical forms of knowledge devoted to describing power relations, gender studies offers a vision of scientific objectivity based on reflexive work—­rather than false neutrality—­that takes account of the researcher’s own social and po­liti­cal position while aiming to describe the social world objectively (through clearly stated hypotheses and methods, critique of sources, and coherently argued demonstration).8 The very subject of this book—­the study of economic relations in the ­family—is a return to the favored themes of French materialist feminism of the 1970s, which theorized and denounced the “po­liti­cal economy of the patriarchy,” meaning the domination of the ­father over his ­family, in par­ tic­u­lar as he exploits the uncompensated ­labor of his wife and appropriates it for himself.9 French feminist activists ­were not the only ones to press for change in the heteronormative ­family setting, as attest the International Wages for House­work Campaign and the Global ­Women’s Strike. However, gender studies and the feminist movement tended to turn away from such issues over time, and ­there is a particularly French twist to this desertion.10 In the 1980s, French materialist feminists mainly went into the field of sociology of work, which had greater professional legitimacy than sociology of the f­ amily and was a favored space for engagement with Marxism.11 A ­whole generation of academic w ­ omen devoted themselves to inequalities between men and ­women in the workplace.12 Although they helped conceptualize work beyond the professional / private dichotomy, they nonetheless implicitly upheld this dichotomy in their choices of research topics and field sites, which favored commodified ­labor. This disinterest in the f­ amily carried into the orientations of state feminism in France. The streak of natalist conservatism coloring French ­family policy since the nineteenth c­ entury led French feminists to think that the

216   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

emancipation of ­women must start in the professional sphere.13 ­Those promoting the cause of ­women in institutions thus quickly seized upon the theme of professional equality and lost interest in reducing economic inequalities rooted in f­ amily relations.14 Radical feminist activists also left this cause by the wayside, partly for the same reasons, in f­avor of the promotion of alternative f­amily models and the rights of LGBTQI+ ­people. In France and the United States alike, the branch of gender studies incorporating queer critique is accordingly focused on the analy­sis of the weight of heteronormative sexuality and the relationship to the body in gender construction.15 In fact, masculinists w ­ ere quicker than feminists to seize upon the theme of ­family relations, particularly when they politicized the moment of separation of c­ ouples and framed it as the “law of ­women, pronounced by ­women, in f­avor of ­women.”16 In both activist and academic circles, the fight against vio­lence against w ­ omen nonetheless renewed interest in relations of physical domination within the ­family, and several recent publications question how this vio­lence is taken in hand by public authorities.17 It is also significant that feminist groups now use the expression “economic vio­lence against ­women and c­ hildren” to pass their message on unpaid child support. Our research is part of this renewed academic and activist interest in relations of domination in the f­ amily.

Using Gender to Revisit ­Family Strategies of Social Reproduction This book is an invitation to return to the Bourdieusian concept of ­family strategies of social reproduction and apply it from a feminist perspective. Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology occupies a central yet paradoxical position in our work. We find that Bourdieu’s earliest work on Kabylia and the Béarn provides an invaluable conceptual toolkit for studying social reproduction through the transfer of economic capital in the ­family. At the same time, a large share of Bourdieusian sociology has consisted of adapting t­ hese concepts to post–­World War II France, characterized by the development of wage ­labor. Building on this perspective, one body of work has cast the spotlight on ­family educational strategies, which vary according to social background, and their consequences for how individuals relate to their near and dear.18 In The Weight of the World, Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the ­family as a site of production of moral dilemmas, guilt, and even suffering for the

Conclusion  217

heir, who is “inherited by his inheritance” in a world that has changed somewhat since the previous generation. Bourdieu famously wrote a very personal text on inheritance, which he described as a knot of contradictions between a f­ ather’s aspirations and ambitions for his son, and how the son actually appropriates this inheritance.19 Borrowing the vocabulary of inheritance, heirs, and capital from the economic lexicon in order to designate f­amily cultural transfers should not distract us from economic transfers of cold, hard cash and assets. The analysis of contemporary social reproduction must take into account both economic and cultural capital.20 For example, in gentrified neighborhoods around Paris, ­people with enough inherited cultural and economic capital are able to “remain bourgeois” thanks to particularly profitable real estate investments, despite having embraced insecure artistic or intellectual ­careers. Not only do they invest in the right place at the right time thanks to help from their families, but their very presence in a neighborhood raises the value of their property. Their real estate assets appreciate even more during the following stage, when the propertied classes with high economic capital arrive in the neighborhood and pay hefty sums for their housing.21 However, for families whose main capital is in the form of educational qualifications that they strug­gle to convert into economic capital, the rising cost of real estate in major urban centers makes it hard to hold on to their social status. As Mike Savage has observed, living in certain cities, or even specific neighborhoods of certain cities, is now an essential condition for putting both economic and cultural capitals to best use and, by the same token, acceding to a high social position.22 ­There is ­little research analyzing relations of domination in such families or the inequalities that f­ amily strategies of social reproduction engender in their midst, let alone inequalities according to gender and birth order.23 ­Today w ­ omen are, on average, more highly educated than men. This success means that ­women in some families carry their parents’ explicit or subconscious hopes of social ascension. This does l­ittle to prevent the rise in wealth inequalities at their expense or their remaining in subaltern professional positions: while ­today most w ­ omen have higher educational attainments than their husbands or partners, they still earn an average of 42 ­percent less, and are less likely to rise into management positions. This observation raises the question of the gender of cultural capital: If ­women undeniably possess cultural and educational resources (sometimes higher

218   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

than ­those of men), can they capitalize them in the same way? Economic and educational capitals have to be explored conjointly if we are to get a better grasp of f­ amily strategies of social reproduction and their effects on the social trajectories of men and w ­ omen from all social backgrounds. As we have seen throughout this book, t­ here are still significant inequalities between men and ­women on the employment market. ­These are tied to discriminatory pro­cesses specific to par­tic­u­lar occupational worlds (be it professions that function as men’s clubs, or ­union organ­izations in which it is difficult for w ­ omen to take the floor), but t­ here is more to it than that. ­These inequalities partly come from gendered educational and ­career orientations, made by the school system, that tend to direct girls to ­careers that are less rewarding financially and symbolically; but t­ here is still more to it than that. The differing ways in which men and ­women relate to work and the differing remuneration they can expect for it are, chronologically speaking, built primarily in the f­ amily. From a tender age in the ­family sphere, one learns to appreciate ­either financial and symbolic rewards, or selflessness and dedication.24 ­These differentiated skill sets are not mechanically tied to a child’s sex, but they are gendered. They depend on birth order and the sexes of c­ hildren in a sibling group, and lead to manifest inequalities between men and ­women. As we have shown in this book, this is ­because they are entwined with masculine and feminine roles in ­family strategies for the accumulation and reproduction of economic capital, roles that are renewed over a lifetime. As the favored ­bearers of the ­family’s social status, sons have the benefit of economic transfers ­earlier in life, which allows them to proceed to accumulate wealth more rapidly and efficiently; sons are also more likely to inherit property than are their s­isters, who more often receive cash compensations of uncertain equity. ­These differential transfers and their associated gendered dispositions are then compounded by the gendered division of h ­ ouse­hold tasks in different­sex ­couples. ­Today ­women still specialize in unpaid domestic ­labor, while men focus on their c­ areers. ­Women work but ­don’t accumulate capital. This impoverishment becomes clear when their relationship ends in separation. Then it all comes full circle: ­women’s economic weakness, accentuated by the rising probability of breakup and the individualization of assets in the name of “in­de­ pen­dence,” deepens their illegitimacy as heirs in their families of origin. If

Conclusion  219

the gender of cultural capital is up for debate (given the outcome of the second wave of demo­cratized access to higher education), the gender of economic capital proves to be resolutely male. This observation is anything but innocuous, given that wealth inequalities increasingly structure inequalities of social position and living conditions.

A Formally Egalitarian Law That Legitimates In­equality The lifelong pro­cesses that enrich men and dispossess ­women are also in play outside of the intimacy of f­ amily relations. Despite formally egalitarian ­family and property laws, we have demonstrated the extent to which their implementation contributes to legitimating and obscuring wealth in­ equality between men and w ­ omen. ­Legal professionals participate in the production of official accounting that, while purporting to protect f­ amily interests (largely thanks to tax optimization), also proves to be sexist. For inheritance, instead of conducting an inventory and appraising an entire estate and then dividing it into equal shares, notaires rubber-­stamp the attribution of the most significant possessions to male heirs and then adjust the inventory and appraisals of the rest of the estate so they can develop an officially egalitarian distribution ­after the fact. Notaires and l­awyers jointly use the same kind of reversed accounting when liquidating conjugal property. Th ­ ese mechanisms are most strikingly clear in the wealthiest families, where men have the means to pay major compensations to their ­sisters and ex-­wives. Thanks to advice from several professionals who look out for their interests (tax l­awyers, accountants, bankers, notaires, wealth man­ag­ers, and so on), men negotiate compensations that are low enough for them to keep the owner­ship of the central assets that guarantee the maintenance of their social status. Court intervention does l­ ittle to make up for t­ hese inequalities. For one ­thing, most estates and liquidations of conjugal property are settled ­behind closed doors in notaires’ and l­ awyers’ offices. Furthermore, even though in France the vast majority of judges are ­women, a ­great many of them are proud of their ability to reconcile their ­careers and ­family obligations and accord ­little legitimacy to l­egal tools like alimony that could allow a divorced homemaker a significant amount of capital or income.25 Like their male peers, they are largely blind to the value of household production and what this unpaid l­abor of ­women brings to men, who sacrifice next to

220   THE GENDER OF CAPITAL

nothing for their ­careers. ­These compensatory tools are mainly reserved for the rich, as capital is needed to put them to use. In the ­middle classes, the accumulation and transfer of cultural capital and property are a joint effort by the c­ ouple that is weakened by separation. The law and ­legal professions are party to making ­women ultimately pay the price of breaking up, in order that the c­ hildren might inherit a ­house, stay in private school, or take over the f­ amily business. When French f­amily court judges are faced with separating working-­ class ­couples, where men’s and ­women’s positions are often especially imbalanced, they are particularly concerned with not discouraging men from working, ­because they consider a working ­father as a positive model for the ­children. They thus readily declare f­athers destitute or set child support very low, forcing ­women to the f­amily benefits office to ensure their ­family’s basic needs. This book shows that regardless of social background, and in vari­ous ways, the practical implementation of formally egalitarian f­ amily and property law legitimates the impoverishment of ­women and the enrichment of men, rather than moderating ­these tendencies. This is our contribution to the relatively recent lit­er­a­ture in France on gender in law and in feminist ­legal studies.26

Gender at the Heart of the Con­temporary Class-­Based Society The moments in which individuals encounter ­family and property law are excellent for observing the complex interconnections between economic capital and cultural capital that structure f­ amily strategies of social reproduction. How p ­ eople relate to l­awyers, notaires, and judges depends not only on how wealthy they are, but also on ­whether they feel socially close to or distant from ­these professionals, which could lead to relationships of trust or distrust, complicity or hostility, identification or alienation, ease or intimidation. The social class relations that develop in interactions with the law, ­legal professionals, and the state also prove to be eminently gendered. At the bottom of the social ladder, ­women must manage extreme poverty and most encounters with public authorities. When they are separated, they are sent to state social ser­vices rather than their ex-­partner being obliged to pay, ­because this would subject him to the humiliation of being in the position

Conclusion  221

of beggar, dependent on welfare. In the m ­ iddle and upper classes, socialization in the law varies according to gender and according to the existence, scale, and composition of ­family wealth. When the only asset is a primary residence purchased jointly by the c­ ouple, men and w ­ omen deal with l­egal professionals together. When their assets are greater and more diversified, especially if they include professional assets, men tend to develop a privileged relationship with ­lawyers and notaires. At the top of the social ladder, men assume control over money and foster comfortable working relations with public administrations, starting with the tax administration. ­These variations in how they relate to the law and its professionals mean that some families appropriate wealth, but all families end up impoverishing ­women in f­avor of men. It is more than the fact that gender inequalities exist in vari­ous forms across the social spectrum: social class relations and masculine domination are indissociably connected. In e­ very social class, reproduction of the gender order is at work in pro­cesses for conserving and transferring wealth. Conversely, the reproduction of the class order is based in pro­cesses that enrich men and impoverish ­women. At a time when ­family wealth is an increasingly power­ful determinant of individuals’ social status, we cannot fight the inequalities between men and w ­ omen without fighting class inequalities, and we cannot bridge the gaps of the class-­based society without overturning the gender order.

Statistical Appendixes

223

Statistical Appendix A The French Wealth Survey

The French Wealth Survey is known in French as the Enquête Patrimoine. The French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) established the pre­de­c es­sor to the Enquête Patrimoine, the “Enquête Actifs Financiers” (Financial Assets Survey), in 1986. This was expanded in 1992 and continued ­under its new name in 1998, 2003–2004, 2010, and 2014–2015. The survey was carried out in 2017–2018 and 2020 in a modified form, named “Histoire de vie et patrimoine.” The French Wealth Survey questions 10,000 ­house­holds in mainland France about the components of their net worth: real estate, financial assets, and professional property (regardless of ­whether the h ­ ouse­hold makes use of it 1 or not). The surveyed h ­ ouse­holds are also asked about estate transfers (inheritance and gifts) received by the “person of reference” and his or her partner (for a definition of the ­house­hold’s “person of reference, see Statistical Appendix E), as well as the less formal financial help the h ­ ouse­hold might have received (one-­time assistance, regular help, housing aid, support for students, and so on). It also includes several ele­ments of the personal, ­family, and occupational history of the person of reference and his or her

225

226   Statistical Appendix A

partner, including year of birth, number of siblings, educational level, job, the major steps in their ­careers, parents’ occupations, and parents’ net worth. The data collected are retrospective (for example, the respondents were asked, in 2014 or 2015, which inheritances and donations they had received throughout their lives). The donations, inheritances, marriages, and partnerships analyzed can therefore have taken place at very dif­fer­ent dates (except when we specify, for example in T ­ able 3.1, that the data concern c­ ouples married for less than ten years). To improve the ability to study the net worth of wealthier ­house­holds and their professional assets, the survey sampling method over-­represents self-­employed p ­ eople, business o­ wners, the professions, cadres and knowledge workers, retirees, and h ­ ouse­holds living in wealthy neighborhoods. The French Wealth Survey pre­sents several challenges when it is used to study wealth inequalities by social class and gender, as we did closely in this book: 1. The French Wealth Survey is quite robust where studying the possession of property and assets is concerned: What kinds of ­house­holds own their housing? A secondary residence? Life insurance? It is much less so when it comes to evaluation—­that is, assessing the value of ­these assets. The French Wealth Survey evaluates assets by questioning ­house­holds on the sum that might be acquired from the sale of what they possess, but ­these possessions (houses, businesses, land, stocks, and so forth) w ­ ill not actually be put up for sale at the time of the survey and so the h ­ ouse­holds’ estimates are only vague approximations. Providing ranges for asset values (rather than asking exact value) makes it pos­si­ble to improve the response rate, but it does nothing to solve the evaluation prob­lem: model simulations then use ­those ­house­hold declarations to determine the value of ­house­hold net worth.2 Statisticians estimate that the total assets found by simulations based on the French Wealth Survey are undervalued by an average of 40 ­percent, relative to data from national accounts.3 The inheritance and gifts declared in ­these surveys represent barely half of the flow observed in tax data, which is by definition lower than a­ ctual flow, b­ ecause it ­doesn’t include life insurance and other untaxed assets.4



Statistical Appendix A  227

2. Like declarative h ­ ouse­hold net worth surveys in most countries, the French Wealth Survey is conducted at the ­house­hold level, not the individual level. This puts wealth inequalities within the ­family, including inequalities in the wealth of men and ­women living together, in an analytical blind spot. 3. One also won­ders who answers the survey in the ­house­hold’s name. Indeed, the first question of the survey is to designate “the person most knowledgeable of the management of ­house­hold assets” so that this person ­w ill be the one to respond to the rest of the questionnaire. Sociologist Camille Herlin-­Giret has demonstrated that, to a significant degree, the wealthier the ­house­hold, the higher the likelihood that a man responds to the questionnaire. We thank her for her permission to reproduce and translate an especially eloquent t­ able (­Table A.1) from her book Rester Riche (Lormont: Le bord de l’eau, 2019, 74).

We are at the disposal of interested readers to provide any clarification necessary for the reproduction of our statistical analy­sis of the French Wealth Survey.

­table a.1. ​Who responded to the French Wealth Survey (i.e., who is “the most knowledgeable of the management of ­house­hold assets”) among interviewed ­couples Both members of the ­ house­hold

One member of the ­house­hold

Bracket 1 [595,700; 800,000 euros]

36.2%

Bracket 2 [800,000; 1,300,000 euros]

Another person

N=

60.9% Of which ­women 5.8%

2.8%

458

38.5%

Of which men 54.2% 59% Of which ­women 38.8%

2.4%

537

Bracket 3 [1,300,000; 2,570,000 euros]

34.8%

Of which men 61.2% 60.7% Of which ­women 30.6%

4.5%

494

Bracket 4 [2,570,000; 5,000,000 euros]

31.3%

Of which men 69.4% 64.9% Of which ­women 27%

3.7%

348

Bracket 5 [5,000,000; 72,770,000 euros]

21.7%

Of which men 73% 73.5% Of which ­women 18.9% Of which men 81.1%

4.8%

230

Taken together [595,700; 72,770,000 euros]

34.5%

62.5% Of which ­women 33.8% Of which men 66.2%

3.5%

2067

40%

57% Of which ­women 54.9% Of which men 45.1%

2.9%

7446

Rest of the database [−325,900; 595,700 euros]

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Reformatted by permission of the author from Camille Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche: Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients (Lormont: Le bord de l’eau, 2019), p. 74, ­table 3.1. Field: Different-­sex ­couples whose net worth is over 595,700 euros (first six lines); all different-­sex ­couples whose net worth is ­u nder 595,700 euros (last line). Read: “36.2 ­percent of ­house­holds possessing between 595,700 and 800,000 euros of net worth responded to the questionnaire together as a c­ ouple.”

Statistical Appendix B Reconstructing the Individual Wealth of ­Women and Men

For the 2014–2015 edition of the French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine), INSEE made an initial database of ­house­hold data available along with other databases of “individuals” (assembling certain information on all members of ­house­holds over age 15), “products” (assembling all the assets that the members of each ­house­hold declared owning, and some properties of ­those assets), and “transfers” (documenting the main transfers of goods and ser­vices received by certain members of the h ­ ouse­hold, be they estate transfers or less formal gifts). The way in which the specific o­ wners of vari­ous ­house­hold assets are identified varies according to the type of asset: 1. For each housing unit owned by the members of a ­house­hold, the survey notes the percentage of this asset that is owned by the h ­ ouse­hold’s person of reference (for a definition of the ­house­hold’s “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E), by his or her partner (should ­there be one), by other members of the ­house­hold (without identifying who they are), and lastly, by ­people not in the ­house­hold. It is thus pos­si­ble to reconstruct 229

230   Statistical Appendix B

the housing assets of the person of reference and his or her pos­ si­ble partner by attributing them with their personally owned shares of each asset, but this is not pos­si­ble for other members of the ­house­hold. 2. For garages, parking spaces, and professional assets, we know only the percentage owned by the ­house­hold as a ­whole. 3. For financial assets (from the checking account to unquoted shares and life insurance policies), we know exactly which person owns them. This individual identification comes with a prob­lem, though: when the ­couple is married ­under the regime of community of assets (communauté de biens), financial assets acquired a­ fter the marriage belong equally to both spouses, regardless of who the formal owner may be. However, the questionnaire does not ask when such assets w ­ ere acquired, so t­ here is no way of knowing if they belong to one person or to a c­ ouple.

For some of our treatments of survey data, we used information on the c­ ouple’s relationship status and wealth arrangements (unmarried living together, married u ­ nder the regime of community of assets or separation of property, marriage date, modifications made to marriage contracts, dates of acquisition of certain assets). We ­were thus able to reconstruct the real estate assets of 18,672 ­people, of which 8,836 ­were men and 9,836 ­were ­women.

Statistical Appendix C Quantitative Mea­sure of Inequalities among Siblings: Methodological Prob­lems

The Limitations in the Recording of Estate Transfers in the French Wealth Survey The questionnaire for the French Wealth Survey rec­ords gifts and inheritance received by the surveyed households—or more precisely, received by their persons of reference and their partner, should they have one (for a definition of the ­house­hold’s “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E). This has consequences for the obtained results. It does not note, for example, gifts or inheritance received by adult c­ hildren still living with their parents (­children living with their parents cannot be designated person of reference for the ­house­hold, regardless of their age or occupation, ­unless they are declared to be the greatest contributor of resources to the ­house­hold). Although the survey does gather some information on all the c­ hildren of persons of reference and their pos­si­ble spouses, regardless of ­whether the ­children live in the ­house­hold or not, t­ here is only minimal information available on the gifts made to t­ hese ­children (or the gifts they receive, for that m ­ atter). More particularly, we know nothing of the nature of the 231

232   Statistical Appendix C

gifted assets, so t­ here is never complete information on sibling groups and the transfers benefiting their members.

Distinguishing between the Effects of Birth Order and Sibling-­Group Size The size of a sibling group affects the estate transfers they receive ­because according to the law, the parents’ assets must be divided equally among their ­children, and the more ­children parents have, the fewer assets they can leave to each of them. Statistical analy­sis of inequalities within sibling groups thus pre­sents several methodological prob­lems. The main prob­lem lies in the fact that data by sibling group is quite rare, as it is usually by individual. For example, the 2003–2004 French Wealth Survey gives an individual’s sex, how many siblings he or she has, and where he or she came in the birth order, but it says nothing of the social fate of the siblings. Moreover, it provides minimal information on the configuration of the sibling group, since it says nothing of the age difference between siblings, or even their sex. It’s impossible to know if a man is the eldest of the boys in his sibling group. This changed in the 2014–2015 survey, which specifies the number of ­brothers and the number of ­sisters born prior to the birth of the individual in question. In 1998, birth rank was not available. In addition to the scarcity of the information gathered, the prob­lem essentially lies in the fact that we only know, for example, the transfers that ­were received by the individual (whose sex and birth order are known), but not what he or she received relative to what was received by his or her siblings. Interested in unequal educational and professional ­futures, Guy Desplanques demonstrated that, all other t­ hings being equal, eldest d ­ aughters received higher educations than youn­gest ­daughters, and went on to note: “­Here the comparison is not made between the eldest and youn­gest girl in the same ­family, but between the share of all the eldest ­daughters of a generation and the share of all the youn­gest d ­ aughters of the same generation.”5 He uses this observation to offer a cautious interpretation of his findings. Notably, the kind of data analyzed does not allow him to rule out an effect from the age of the parents: an eldest child of a given age generally has parents who are younger than the parents of a youn­gest child of the same age; his or her parents are more likely to have



Statistical Appendix C  233

higher educational attainments, since the level of general studies is advancing; for ­children of a given age, the parents of eldest ­children thus have greater educational capital to pass along to them. Desplanques concludes, “According to this hypothesis, parents ­don’t push their eldest harder than their other ­children, and the results presented ­here are only the result of an effect from the generation of the parents.” 6 Elsewhere in the world, the question of ­whether the differences observed in eldest and youn­gest ­children are related to birth order or to differences between families (parental age and characteristics, sibling-­group size) recurs in statistical analyses, usually by social psychologists, on a range of subjects including success in school, time spent with c­ hildren, and even IQ.7 Bernard Zarca s­ettles this prob­lem in his analy­sis of the differential social mobility of siblings. He stresses that “quantitative sociology has relatively well analyzed the phenomena of transfer, especially social mobility according to background, alliances, sex, birth order, and the characteristics of the latter. But it has barely questioned differentiation between members of the same sibling group.”8 He then proposes analyzing social mobility using data intended for the analy­sis of kinship networks. He uses the ­Family Networks Survey (Réseaux familiaux) by INED, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies, for its results on the inheritance of self-­employment and business owner­ship and its early analyses of social mobility differences within sibling groups, and INED’s Relatives and Parents Survey (Proches et parents) for its updated analyses of such differential mobility.9 Zarca is thus able to compare the trajectories of ­actual siblings, instead of all eldest and youn­gest ­children, and to robustly demonstrate the existence of differentiation in trajectories within sibling groups. This approach has been especially developed in the field of history, and Zarca explic­itly refers to the work of Maurizio Gribaudi (Itinéraires ouvriers: Espaces et groupes à Turin au début du vingtième siècle, 1987). Historians use sources such as civil status registers (rather than ­house­hold or individual surveys), which allow them to see siblings. Work by researchers such as Paul-­A ndré Rosental, who used data from the “3000 Families” Survey and the TRA Survey, revolutionized analy­sis of how migration affects the functioning of kinship.10 Such work nonetheless highlights the challenges of working quantitatively on the highly varied sibling configurations of periods ­shaped by high fecundity and mortality rates: “The

234   Statistical Appendix C

sibling group, a seemingly s­ imple entity, can produce a considerable diversity of demographic configurations, according to number, sexual composition, and age distribution.”11 Varying the scale of analy­sis (from case study to statistical analy­sis) thus seems to be especially necessary for developing the tools with which to comprehend the quantitative data (Should we be interested in the size of the sibling group? Its composition by sex? The difference between the eldest and youn­gest? The difference between ­brothers and ­sisters?). If sibling-­group size varies less in France now that the model of the two-­child f­ amily has become widespread, it is still difficult to statistically characterize the effect of sibling-­group configuration on social outcome, and this is further complicated by the non-­negligible presence of blended families.12 How to best identify the differences between only, eldest, or youn­gest ­children in larger or smaller sibling groups? How many ­children should a sibling group have, for a ­family to be considered a “large ­family” in terms of the social phenomena we are observing (success in school, wealth transfer, migration)? We took account of two questions in developing the results presented ­here: 1. Should the size of the sibling group be taken into account in addition to birth order? The answer seems to be yes, especially ­because the differences between eldest and youn­gest may actually hide differences between ­children of small sibling groups and ­children from large families when data is on the individual, not the ­whole group. We can avoid this bias in analyses considering “all other ­things being equal” by controlling for sibling-­group size. We conducted this verification for all of the results presented ­here, when the number of individuals was large enough. 2. Should sex and birth order be considered separately or jointly? We chose the first option when one of the two variables seemed distinctly more impor­tant than the other (most often, this was sex). The role of birth order was more often combined with that of gender. If absolute elderhood has an effect, the ethnographic lit­er­a­ture teaches us that the crucial ­thing is usually being the firstborn boy or the firstborn girl, or the only child of one’s sex within a sibling group. We accounted for the most significant differences in the statistical analyses.



Statistical Appendix C  235

­table c.1. ​Regressions of the probability that an estate transfer consists of money only or of an inter vivos gift, in sibling groups of the same size Probability that an estate transfer consists of . . . ​

1

money only

an inter vivos gift

First model: all transfers

Constant Sibling group size Sons ­Daughters

−0.33*** 0.11*** −0.16*** Ref.

−0.19*** −0.23*** 0.18*** Ref.

Second model: transfers received by ­people with at least one b­ rother or s­ ister

Constant Sibling group size Firstborn sons Firstborn ­daughters Other sons Other ­daughters

−0.18*** 0.10*** −0.39*** −0.18** −0.09 Ref.

−0.26*** −0.22*** 0.26*** 0.10 0.22*** Ref.

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: All transfers received by persons of reference and their spouse / partner (should they have one) in French ­house­holds (N = 9,497). For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: A binomial logit model was used. A transfer representing a given characteristic w ­ ill have more / less chance of consisting of money only / an inter vivos gift than a h ­ ouse­hold presenting the characteristic of reference if the coefficient associated with this characteristic is positive / negative. For sibling-­group size, the sign of the coefficient indicates an effect of an increase in sibling-­group size on the probability that a transfer consists of money only / an inter vivos gift. * = significance level of 10%; ** = significance level of 5%; *** = significance level of 1%.

In order to distinguish between inheritance inequalities related to birth order and ­those related to sibling-­group size, we tested a binomial logistic regression model including both variables as explicative of the nature of estate transfers. In ­these models, we separated or combined sex category and birth order. The results obtained through cross-­sorting are confirmed: sex and birth order both have effects on the nature of the estate transfers received. ­Table C.1 pre­sents some of the results of ­these regressions.

Statistical Appendix D The Nomenclature for Socioprofessional Categories in France

INSEE’s terminology for socioprofessional categories (commonly called the PCS, for Professions et catégories socioprofessionnelles) is used to codify the social position of individuals and h ­ ouse­holds according to the last job held by the individual or the h ­ ouse­hold’s person of reference (for a definition of the ­house­hold’s “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E). It applies several princi­ples of classification, related to the worker’s qualifications, hierarchical position, and status as employee or self-­employed, and the nature of the employer (public or private sector). Th ­ ose who developed the socioprofessional categories admit that ­these princi­ples for categorization are a compromise between multiple rationales, including the classifications in effect in public companies and administrations and t­ hose of professional organ­izations. This mix of scientific and vernacular classificatory princi­ples is also one of the nomenclature’s strengths in describing French society.13 Consequently, in France the socioprofessional categories are considered to be the best tool for capturing social stratification in the national

236



Statistical Appendix D  237

space, even though they have increasing competition from other categories, such as the ESEG (Eu­ro­pean socioeconomic groups), which facilitate comparison at the Eu­ro­pean level.14 The French nomenclature has four nested levels of aggregation. At the finest level, each term corresponds to an occupation. The most aggregated level defines eight major occupational groups. The intermediate levels break the main socioprofessional categories into forty-­t wo and twenty-­ four subcategories. In the book, we most frequently use the first six categories of the most aggregated level of the nomenclature, and we classify retired persons, who form the seventh group, with active workers in their former line of work: farm operators; tradespeople, shop­keep­ers, and business heads; cadres and higher intellectual professions (often shortened to “cadres”); intermediary professions; basic employees; laborers. While the first two are rather self-­ explanatory, the rest require a few words of definition. “Cadre” does not have an exact equivalent in British or American usage, so we have left it in French for accuracy: Cadres are employees with specialized skills in administrative, decision-­making, and / or managerial positions in businesses, organ­izations, and the civil ser­vice, enjoying the benefits and security that come with such positions (see Luc Boltanski’s The Making of a Class: Cadres in French Society [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987] for a detailed analy­sis). Cadres are grouped with higher intellectual professions—­ knowledge workers—­because both presume advanced studies. Intermediary professions are, as the name suggests, neither high nor low, neither cadres with their degrees and responsibilities nor manual workers performing routine tasks. Basic employees perform executant tasks that generally require few to no formal educational qualifications, generally in “white-­collar” or “pink-­collar” sectors. The category “laborers” was created as the category for classic “blue-­collar” workers. In ­Table D.1 we pre­sent the nomenclature of the levels containing eight and forty-­t wo (sub)categories. We have provided the forty-­t wo-­subcategory nomenclature to give a more concrete idea of the content of ­these major categories.

­table d.1. ​The eight socioprofessional categories and forty-­t wo subcategories of French ­labor statistics The eight major socioprofessional categories Farm operators

Tradespeople, shop­ keep­ers, and business heads Cadres and higher intellectual professions

Intermediary professions

Basic employees

Laborers

Retired ­people

­ thers, without paid O employment

The PCS level of forty-­two subcategories Farmers with small farms Farmers with midsize farms Farmers with large farms Tradespeople Shop­keep­ers and comparable Heads of businesses with ten or more employees Members of the professions and the skilled self-­employed Cadres in civil ser­vice Professors, scientific professions Information, arts, and per­for­mance professions Cadres in business administration and sales Engineers and technical cadres working for a com­pany Schoolteachers and comparable Intermediary occupations in health and social work Clergy, holy ­orders Intermediary occupations in civil ser­vice administration Intermediary occupations in business administration and sales Technicians Foremen, supervisors Civilian civil ser­vice employees and ser­vice agents Police and military Business administrative employees Sales employees Personal ser­vices employees Skilled industrial workers Skilled workers in the trades ­Drivers Skilled shipping, h ­ andling, and transportation workers Low-­skill industrial workers Low-­skill workers in the trades Farmworkers Former farm operators Former tradespeople, shop­keep­ers, and business heads Former cadres Former intermediary professions Former basic employees Former laborers Unemployed, never having been employed Military conscripts Students Assorted p ­ eople ­under age 60 without a professional activity (excluding retired p ­ eople) Assorted p ­ eople over age 60 without a professional activity (excluding retired p ­ eople)

Statistical Appendix E Who Is the “Person of Reference” in a House­hold?

The INSEE surveys at the level of the “house­hold.” According to INSEE’s definition, generally speaking, “house­hold” designates all the residents of a given dwelling, regardless of ­whether or not they have kinship ties. A ­house­hold may be composed of a single person. Within each h ­ ouse­hold, the French statistical institute identifies one person whose characteristics (such as age and occupational category) ­will be taken as representative of ­those of the ­house­hold as a ­whole. ­Until the 1975 census, INSEE called this person the “head of h ­ ouse­hold,” and it designated the person who declared him or herself as such (or was considered as such by the investigator) at the time of the survey. With the 1982 census, it was no longer pos­si­ble for the investigator to choose who was the “head.” INSEE began to apply exacting princi­ples for designating the statistical representative of the ­house­hold, henceforth called the “person of reference.” ­These princi­ples led to a par­tic­u­lar definition of the ­family as part of a ­house­hold including at least two ­people and consisting of ­either (1) a married or unmarried c­ ouple, with their child(ren), should t­ here be any, living in the same ­house­hold, or (2) one adult, with their child(ren), should ­there

239

240   Statistical Appendix E

be any, living in the same ­house­hold (a single-­parent ­family). ­Until 2004, the rule for determining a ­house­hold’s “person of reference” was as follows: 1. If the ­house­hold contains one or more families, at least one of which includes a different-­sex c­ ouple,15 the person of reference is the oldest professionally active man in a different-­sex ­couple, or if none of them are actively working, the oldest man. 2. Other ­w ise, if the h ­ ouse­hold has no families containing a different-­sex ­couple and at least one single-­parent ­family, then the person of reference is the oldest professionally active parent of ­these families (of any sex category), or barring that, the oldest. 3. Lastly, if the ­house­hold contains no families, the person of reference is the oldest professionally active person (of any sex category), or lacking that, the oldest person.

So ­until 2004, a person’s chances of being selected as their ­house­hold’s person of reference ­were best if they lived in a different-­sex ­couple, had ­children in the h ­ ouse­hold, w ­ ere a man, ­were professionally active, and w ­ ere older. As Thibaut de Saint-­Pol, Aurélie Deney, and Olivier Monso wrote at the time: “If it is impor­tant to think about the rule for designating the head of ­house­hold, it is as much ­because this rule is the fruit of repre­sen­ta­tions (why systematically designate the man in a c­ ouple as the head?) as ­because it contributes to the formation of other repre­sen­ta­tions.”16 INSEE gave up using sex category as a criteria for designating the ­house­hold’s person of reference in 2004. The replacement criteria (mainly age and income) and their order of importance have varied with each edition of the survey. For the French Wealth Survey of 2014–2015 that we use extensively in this book, the criterion of individual income replaced the criterion of sex category: the person of reference became the person who contributes the greatest resources to the h ­ ouse­hold at the time of the survey (lacking adequate information, the survey falls back on the former definition).

Statistical Appendix F ­Legal Forms of Union and Their Determinants

The French Wealth Survey (Enquête Patrimoine) takes note of the property regime chosen at the time of marriage as well as any changes that might have been made to the regime over the course of the marital. For reasons of comparability we sometimes worked with the initial marital regime, which makes it pos­si­ble to avoid effects that the duration of the marriage might have had on the most recent regime. This had ­little impact on the results. To show the variables correlated with the choice to marry ­under the regime called “separation of property” and its specificities, we first ran cross tabulations. We then focused on different-­sex c­ ouples married less than ten years to comprehend con­temporary uses of this increasingly popu­lar marital regime, using a model developed by Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq.17 To find the effects that spousal age difference has on the type of u ­ nion a c­ ouple chooses, we built five categories of age difference: (1) age difference favoring the ­woman; (2) age difference of less than a year favoring the man; (3) age difference of 2 to 3 years in ­favor of the man (the average age gap); (4) age difference of 4 to 6 years in f­avor of the man; (5) age difference of more than 6 years in f­avor of the man. The categories may seem 241

242   Statistical Appendix F

imbalanced, but they represent roughly the same number of p ­ eople among study participants. The results presented in ­Table 3.1 of Chapter 3 concern the regime chosen at the time of marriage. For further information, in T ­ able F.1 we provide the equivalent results for the most recent marital regime, taking account of any changes that might have been made to the regime between the time of marriage and the time of the survey. We then conducted logistic regressions on the probability of married ­couples being u ­ nder the separation-­of-­property regime (using regime at the time of the survey) but also on the probability of different-­sex c­ ouples cohabitating without being married: • Cohabitating without being married is another way for ­couples to keep their assets apart. In this regard, it is in­ter­est­ing to compare the variables that correlate with unmarried cohabitation and the variables that correlate with marriage ­ u nder the separation-­of-­property regime (this comparison of two ­legal forms of u ­ nion excluding shared assets is why we excluded the “unmarried cohabitations” of c­ ouples in civil u ­ nions who chose the regime of indivision, which is similar to the community of assets acquired a­ fter marriage; moreover, such c­ ouples are relatively rare, representing only 82 ­couples in our database of 443 ­couples with civil ­unions and 1,565 unmarried cohabitating ­couples). • Furthermore, c­ ouples married u ­ nder the separation-­of-­property regime are ­couples that nevertheless chose marriage over unmarried cohabitation. To understand how and why this form of ­union is used, it is useful to compare it to unmarried cohabitation, and then to see what distinguishes it from other forms of marriage.

In order to make ­these comparisons, we included all different-­sex c­ ouples in the regression on the probability that a ­couple be cohabitating without being married, and then all married different-­sex c­ ouples for the regression on the probability that a c­ ouple be married u ­ nder the separation-­of-­ property regime. In order to neutralize the significant age differences between t­ hese groups (on average, married c­ ouples are older and have been together longer than unmarried cohabitating ­couples), we analyzed the

­table f.1. ​Latest marital regime of ­couples married for less than ten years Latest marital regime Community of assets acquired ­after Separation Universal marriage of property community Other All ­couples

77.8

16.6

4.4

1.2

­ ouse­hold’s person of reference Socioprofessional category of the h Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, business head . . . ​of which business heads of companies with 10 or more employees Cadre or higher intellectual profession . . . ​of which in the professions or skilled self-­employed Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer ­Couples including one self-­employed person

45.3 63.4 39.2

54.2 31.7 57.1

0 4.5 2.0

0.5 0.4 1.7

66.2 44.9

29.1 52.5

4.4 2.3

0.3 0.3

83.0 86.0 87.6 60.9

10.9 9.7 5.0 34.2

4.3 2.6 5.9 3.7

1.8 1.7 1.5 1.2

75.7 53.1 58.9 67.4

18.9 39.0 32.4 27.6

4.4 7.6 7.4 3.9

1.0 0.4 1.3 1.1

­Couples that own . . . ​ Their primary residence Their secondary residence Investment properties Securities

Relative net worth of the man and the ­woman when they got together The man’s net worth was higher than the ­woman’s The w ­ oman’s net worth was higher than the man’s The man and the woman had nearly equivalent net worths Neither had any assets

70.6 70.1 80.7

23.2 25.5 12.9

5.0 3.0 5.0

1.2 1.4 1.4

87.7

7.3

4.1

0.9

78.1 80.8 81.3 79.1 68.8 65.5

16.4 14.1 13.2 18.0 22.1 25.6

3.8 4.7 3.7 2.5 7.3 8.1

1.7 0.4 1.8 0.4 1.8 0.8

Age difference between spouses The w ­ oman is older than the man The man is less than a year older than the w ­ oman The man is 2–3 years older than the ­woman The man is 4–6 years older than the ­woman The man is more than 6 years older than the w ­ oman One member of the c­ ouple was previously married

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. Field: All different-­sex ­couples married for less than 10 years, composed of the person of reference and his or her spouse. N = 2,092. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: “16.6 ­percent of married c­ ouples ­were living ­under the separation-­of-­property marital regime at the time of the survey.”

243

244   Statistical Appendix F

subgroup of all c­ ouples that had been together for up to ten years: considering first all such c­ ouples, and then only t­ hose who w ­ ere married. This last scenario does not mean c­ ouples that have been married for less than ten years, but instead c­ ouples that got together in the last ten years and got married afterward (a third of the ­couples married for fewer than ten years had been living together for more than ten years, in some cases for de­cades, and therefore we excluded them from the analy­sis for the sake of comparability). Thus, from among all the c­ ouples formed in a l­ imited time frame, we can identify which ones did not get married, which ones did, and, among ­those who did, which ones ­were married u ­ nder the separation of property or changed subsequently to that regime. This limitation of the population included in the analyses does have effects on the significance of the results, which led us to produce and annotate the results for all ­couples, regardless of how long they had been together (­Table F.2). ­table f.2. ​Regression of the probability of a c­ ouple being unmarried and of a married c­ ouple opting for the separation of property at the time of marriage Probability of unmarried cohabitation (excluding civil u­ nion in indivision)

Probability of marriage ­under the regime of the separation of property

All ­couples

Married ­couples

­Couples formed in last 10 years Total number Constant

2,853 −0.6416**

All

­Couples formed in last 10 years

All

7,555 1,591 6,019 −2.3888*** −3.2035*** −3.2304***

Age of the ­woman ­Under 25 years 25 to 34 35 to 44 45 to 54 55 to 64 65 and over

2.2263*** 3.6210*** −14.3236 0.8948*** 2.1712*** −0.1884 −0.1141 0.8463*** 0.0155 Ref. Ref. Ref. −0.0372 −0.8689*** −0.0494 0.4694 −1.2777*** −0.2089

−12.4271 0.074 0.1352 Ref. −0.2927* −0.4709**

Age difference between spouses / partners The w ­ oman is older than the man The man is less than a year older than the w ­ oman The man is 2–3 years older than the ­woman

0.3765*** −0.0151

0.7213*** 0.1560

Ref.

Ref.

0.2765 0.121 Ref.

0.2647 −0.00623 Ref.

­table f.2. ​Continued Probability of unmarried cohabitation (excluding civil u­ nion in indivision)

Probability of marriage ­under the regime of the separation of property

All ­couples

Married ­couples

­Couples formed in last 10 years The man is 4–6 years older than the ­woman The man is 6+ years older than the ­woman One member of the c­ ouple has already been married

−0.1082

All −0.0371

−0.3797*** −0.4301*** 0.6307***

1.3974***

­Couples formed in last 10 years

All

0.5115*

0.3485**

0.3492

0.3951**

0.8315***

0.9863***

The man’s highest educational attainment Unknown No educational attainments Attainments below baccalauréat level Baccalauréat or equivalent (completed secondary studies) Two years post-­baccalauréat (~ undergraduate degree) Over two and up to five years post­baccalauréat (~ master’s degree) Five or more years post-­baccalauréat, grandes écoles (~ PhD)

2.2684 0.3739** 0.2844** 0.2674*

1.9080 0.2362 0.1684 0.1428

−14.2503 −0.3059 −0.4933* 0.204

−12.3249 −0.5792** −0.2718 0.0581

Ref.

Ref.

Ref.

Ref.

0.1522

0.0619

−0.3447

−0.3123

0.1213

0.066

0.0304

0.0618

−3.1994 0.108 −0.6181* −0.3113

−5.8641 −0.2552 −0.3969** −0.2143

The ­woman’s highest educational attainment Unknown 0.2666 No educational attainments −0.1992 Attainments below baccalauréat level 0.5135*** Baccalauréat or equivalent (com0.1798 pleted secondary studies) Two years post-­baccalauréat Ref. (~ associate’s degree) Over two and up to five years post-­ 0.0621 baccalauréat (~ bachelor’s / masters’ degree) Five or more years post-­baccalauréat, 0.2263 grandes écoles (~ PhD)

0.4335 −0.0936 0.2260* 0.1321 Ref.

Ref.

Ref.

0.1337

−0.3268

0.0189

0.0551

0.4313*

0.2899*

Relative net worth of the man and the ­woman at the time they became a c­ ouple The man’s net worth was higher than the ­woman’s The w ­ oman’s net worth was higher than the man’s

0.6086***

0.7643***

0.8977***

0.6927***

0.5112***

0.6425***

1.3256***

0.9216*** (continued) 245

­table f.2. ​Continued Probability of unmarried cohabitation (excluding civil u­ nion in indivision)

Probability of marriage ­under the regime of the separation of property

All ­couples

Married ­couples

­Couples formed in last 10 years The man and the ­woman had nearly equivalent net worths Unknown Neither had any assets

All

­Couples formed in last 10 years

All

0.0901

0.0917

0.3396

0.2619*

0.4325 Ref.

0.6257 Ref.

2.2996** Ref.

0.6883 Ref.

Sibling group and birth order of man and w ­ oman The size of the man’s sibling group The man is the firstborn boy in his sibling group The size of the w ­ oman’s sibling group The w ­ oman is the firstborn girl in her sibling group

−0.1785*** −0.1380*** −0.0929* −0.2562*** −0.1932** −0.0896

−0.031 −0.093

−0.1000*** −0.0800

−0.0470** 0.0147

−0.0422 0.0617

−0.4193 0.1159 Ref. −0.4254* −0.1519

0.0274 0.0745 Ref. −0.2797 −0.1185

0.4455 0.1093 Ref. 0.2248 0.0957

0.4723 0.0581 Ref. 0.3689 0.3226**

−0.0199 0.1368 Ref. −0.0204 −0.1195

0.2837 0.1119 Ref. 0.1258 −0.0805

1.1448** 0.5106** Ref. −0.1219 0.5486**

0.4534 0.2701** Ref. 0.2468 0.3459**

0.2847 0.4549 Ref.

0.0564 0.4060** Ref.

−0.0853 −0.0929

The man’s parents’ real estate assets Real estate assets unknown No real estate assets Primary residence only Other housing only Primary residence and other housing The ­woman’s parents’ real estate assets Real estate assets unknown No real estate assets Primary residence only Other housing only Primary residence and other housing

Possession of securities by the man’s parents Unknown Possess securities No securities

0.3521** −0.0242 Ref.

0.3606*** 0.0861 Ref.

Possession of securities by the ­woman’s parents Unknown Possess securities No securities

0.1627 −0.1239 Ref.

−0.0381 −0.1187 Ref.

0.1299

0.1106

−0.1107 0.0869 Ref.

0.1818 0.2319 Ref.

Self-­employed parents At least one of the man’s parents is self-­employed or owns a business 246

0.3542*

0.3252***

­table f.2. ​Continued Probability of unmarried cohabitation (excluding civil u­ nion in indivision)

Probability of marriage ­under the regime of the separation of property

All ­couples

Married ­couples

­Couples formed in last 10 years ­ oman’s parents is At least one of the w self-­employed or owns a business

0.0118

All 0.0206

­Couples formed in last 10 years

All

0.6589**

0.3964***

1.2053 0.9699***

0.7629** 0.8887***

Man’s socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, or business head Cadre or higher intellectual profession Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer Occupation unknown

0.0777 0.1053 −0.6430*** −0.4311** −0.3309** −0.2722** Ref. Ref. −0.2293 −0.1500 0.2694** 0.3266*** 1.0684*** 0.6554**

0.7094*** 0.5324*** Ref. Ref. 0.2277** −0.00033 −0.0398 −0.1637 0.1875 1.0452**

−1.4162* −0.1869

−1.1796** 0.0692

−2.2606 0.0867

−0.2407 Ref. −0.3043** −0.3253* −0.8933***

−0.2837* 0.2168 0.1097 Ref. Ref. Ref. −0.2236** −0.7899*** −0.5304*** −0.1251 −0.0468 −0.0615 −0.8923*** −0.2024 −0.3305

­Woman’s socioprofessional category Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, or business head Cadre or higher intellectual positions Intermediary profession Basic employee Laborer Occupation unknown

−0.9615** 0.0433

House­hold real estate assets No real estate assets Primary residence only Other housing only Primary residence and other housing The h ­ ouse­hold possesses securities At least one member of the c­ ouple is self-­employed or owns a business

0.7942*** Ref. 0.6446*** 0.064 0.2312** 0.012

0.7136*** Ref. 0.3522** 0.0192 0.2765*** 0.0585

0.0886 −0.1557 Ref. Ref. −0.0537 −0.0979 0.3379 0.2004 0.2543 0.1377 0.7773*** 0.4737***

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­f r​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=l­il​-­1150. Field: All different-­sex ­couples consisting of a person of reference and his or her partner. For a definition of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: A binomial logit model was used ­here. A ­couple presenting a given characteristic ­w ill have more / less likelihood of being in an unmarried cohabitating relationship (excluding a civil ­u nion ­u nder the regime of indivision) than a ­couple presenting the characteristic of reference if the coefficient associated with this characteristic is positive / negative. For sibling group size, the sign of the coefficient indicates the effect of an increase in size of the sibling group on the probability that a ­couple is cohabitating without being married. * = significance level of 10%; ** = significance level of 5%; *** = significance level of 1%.

247

Statistical Appendix G Analyzing a Dated Practice: The Gift to the Survivor

To analyze the practice of the gift to the survivor, we de­cided to use the results of the French Wealth Survey, 2004–2005, based on h ­ ouse­hold surveys conducted in 2003–2004. At the time, the meaning of this ­legal provision had been altered very recently by the Law of 3 December 2001, and so using a more recent edition of the French Wealth Survey (2014–2015) would have run the risk of mixing a variety of ­actual practices ­under the same name (all the more so as t­ here ­were no questions on the date of the gift). Using the 2003–2004 survey ensured that almost all of the mentioned gifts ­were made ­under the same l­egal framework. A gift to the survivor can be made at vari­ous points in a marriage (see the regression in ­Table G.1: the older the spouses, the greater the likelihood that a gift to the survivor has been made). So, for the cross tabulation, we chose to focus on relatively older different-­sex ­couples, who w ­ ere the most likely to have already made such a gift by the time of the survey: c­ ouples in which the ­woman is over the age of 65.

248



Statistical Appendix G  249

­table g.1. ​Regressions of certain marital practices (marriage, property regime, gift to the survivor) observed in 2003–2004 All ­couples Gift to the Unmarried survivor cohabiting Constant

Married ­couples Community of Gift to the assets acquired survivor ­after marriage

Separation of property

−1.43*** −1.20***

−0.94***

2.94***

−3.59***

−2.09 2.25*** −0.94*** 1.49*** −0.4*** 0.95*** Ref. Ref. 0.41*** −0.94*** 0.55*** −1.52***

−1.18 −0.61*** −0.23* Ref. 0.26** 0.30

−0.5 0.54* 0.39** Ref. 0.03 0.42

1.08 −0.26 −0.18 Ref. 0.05 −0.27

−2.21*** −0.66*** −0.37*** Ref. 0.12 0.74***

1.25*** 0.67*** 0.19 Ref. 0.5** 0.27

−1.92** −0.60*** −0.40*** Ref. 0.26* 0.92***

−0.03 −0.63** −0.51*** Ref. 0.23 −0.29

−0.13 0.63** 0.51** Ref. −0.21 0.11

0.31*** 0.09 Ref.

0.18 0.05 Ref.

0.32** 0.07 Ref.

−0.29* 0.07 Ref.

0.31* 0.01 Ref.

0.12 0.02 Ref.

−0.43*** 0.02 Ref.

0.57*** 0.05 Ref.

0.43***

Age of man ­Under 25 years 25 to 34 35 to 44 45 to 54 55 to 64 65 and over Age of ­woman ­Under 25 years 25 to 34 35 to 44 45 to 54 55 to 64 65 and over Birth order of man Only child Eldest Youn­gest Birth order of ­woman Only child Eldest Youn­gest

0.14 0.06 Ref.

−0.11 −0.1 Ref.

The man’s parents’ real estate assets during his childhood Primary residence and other housing Other housing None Primary residence

−0.10

−0.07

−0.13

−0.49***

0.12 −0.07 Ref.

−0.57** 0.17* Ref.

0.01 −0.06 Ref.

−0.43** 0.2 Ref.

0.32 −0.13 Ref. (continued)

250   Statistical Appendix G

­table g.1. ​Continued All ­couples Gift to the Unmarried survivor cohabiting

Married ­couples Community of Gift to the assets acquired survivor ­after marriage

Separation of property

The ­woman’s parents’ real estate assets during her childhood Primary residence and other housing Other housing None Primary residence

0.22*

−0.20

0.19 0.28 −0.21*** −0.06 Ref. Ref.

0.25**

−0.65***

0.71***

0.21 −0.25*** Ref.

−0.06 0.19 Ref.

0.33 0.01 Ref.

0.08

−0.31***

0.4***

−0.10

−0.27**

0.09

Parental owner­ship of work tool The man’s parents owned their work tool The w ­ oman’s parents owned their work tool

0.08

−0.02

−0.05

0.01

Comparative net worth of the c­ ouple at the time they got together The man’s net worth was higher than the woman’s The woman’s net worth was higher than the man’s The man and the woman had nearly equivalent net worths Neither had any assets

0.05

0.31***

0.12

−1.11***

1.18***

0.11

0.01

0.16

−0.83***

1.03***

0.01

−0.16

−0.02

−0.62***

0.49***

Ref.

Ref.

−12.20 0.02 0.14

11.86 0.06 −0.85***

−11.69 0.15 1.08***

0.06

−0.45***

0.48***

0.30 0.50*** Ref.

−0.21 −0.76*** Ref.

Ref.

Ref.

Ref.

The man’s occupation None Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, or business head Cadre or higher intellectual profession Basic employee Laborer Intermediary profession

−11.96 0.04 0.27**

−0.11 −0.4 −0.78***

0.09

−0.26*

−0.1 −0.3*** Ref.

−0.21 −0.01 Ref.

−0.15 −0.34*** Ref.



Statistical Appendix G  251

­table g.1. ​Continued All ­couples Gift to the Unmarried survivor cohabiting

Married ­couples Community of Gift to the assets acquired survivor ­after marriage

Separation of property

The ­woman’s occupation None Farm operator Tradesperson, shop­keeper, or business head Cadre or higher intellectual profession Basic employee Laborer Intermediary profession

−0.37** 0.41 0.12

−0.97*** −0.79 −0.17

−0.50*** 0.29 0.14

0.03 0.23 0.34

−0.17 −0.59 −0.33

−0.28**

−0.02

−0.33**

−0.65***

0.79***

−0.11 −0.2 Ref.

−0.18 −0.16 Ref.

−0.18* 0.22* Ref.

0.51*** 1.05*** Ref.

−0.45*** −1.07*** Ref.

­Children, marital history, and joint property owner­ship The c­ ouple has ­children 0.28** −0.99*** The c­ ouple has at least one −0.09 0.09 son- or ­daughter-in-law One member of the ­couple −0.23** 1.98*** was previously divorced The c­ ouple jointly owns their 1.73*** −1.12*** primary residence The c­ ouple jointly owns other 0.67*** −0.93*** housing

0.04 −0.05 0.34

# # −0.88***

# # 1.02***

1.64

#

#

0.56

#

#

Data source: INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2003–2004, INSEE (producer), ADISP (diffuser), http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=­lil​-­1150. This regression is taken from Sibylle Gollac, “La pierre de discorde, stratégies immobilières familiales dans la France contemporaine” (PhD diss., EHESS [School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences], Paris), November 2011, p. 579. ­ ouse­holds in France. For a definition Population: All c­ ouples composed of a person of reference and his or her partner in h of “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. Read: A binomial logit model was used. A c­ ouple presenting a given characteristic is more / less likely to have made a gift to the survivor than a c­ ouple presenting the characteristic of reference if the coefficient associated with this characteristic is positive / negative. * = significance level of 10%; ** = significance level of 5%; *** = significance level of 1%. # ­Because this analy­sis studies the marital regime chosen at the time of marriage, we consider that the effects of c­ hildren, sons-­in-­law or daughters-­in-­law, and joint real estate assets would be challenging to interpret: they usually enter the picture ­a fter marriage, especially if it is the first marriage.

Statistical Appendix H The “4000 ­Family Cases Database”

The “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” was compiled by researchers of the Ruptures research team (which has since changed its name to JustineS), funded by the Mission Droit et Justice, the City of Paris, and the national ­family benefits office (CNAF). It is composed of a random sample of 3,000 court rulings issued by f­amily court judges in seven lower courts (tribunaux de grande instance) and 1,000 rulings from two appeals courts, all dating to 2013. The selected courts varied in size, geo­graph­i­cal location, and the sociodemographic composition of the population they served. For lower-­court decisions, a sample of 10 ­percent of all relevant rulings in ­these seven courts was made by randomly drawing case numbers from the General Civil Repertory provided by the Ministry of Justice. The team made three databases according to the three main kinds of procedures: “divorces by mutual consent” (uncontested divorces), “contested divorces” (all but uncontested divorces), and “extra-­or postdivorce cases” (for parents who w ­ ere never married or had already divorced). Depending on the database, 800 to 2,500 variables w ­ ere entered for each case. In addition to the final rulings and procedural information (such as how long the case lasted), this original database accords ­great importance to the sociodemographic characteristics of the ­people ­going to court and the ­legal 252



Statistical Appendix H  253

professionals who intervene—­information that is rarely provided in the sources available from the Ministry of Justice. The aim was to be able to take a multidimensional approach to exploring the dif­fer­ent experiences that ­people may have with the law and courts while ­going about ordinary ­legal business. ­These variables communicate the sociodemographic characteristics of the parties ­going to court and their pos­si­ble ­children (including their sex category, age, job, and housing situation), the characteristics of their cases (presence or absence of l­awyers, length of ­legal briefs, documentation provided, and so on), the requests they made, and the final decrees. We also gathered information from expert testimony, hearings with c­ hildren, prior ­family procedures, and other court cases in which the concerned parties ­were involved, should ­there be any (such as criminal procedures in the case of domestic vio­lence). For ­legal reasons, the “4000 ­Family Cases Database” is not a public resource. But we are at the disposal of interested readers to provide any clarification necessary about how we produced our results.

Statistical Appendix I Identifying the Fate of ­Couples’ Assets Following a Separation

Divorce files do not always contain information on the partitioning of a ­couple’s property at the end of a marriage. The divorce decree generally ­orders the liquidation of the marital property but does not specify how—­ this is determined ­later in the presence of a notaire. As a result, divorce files generally contain incomplete and fragmented information on the fate of the ex-­couple’s property. In divorces by mutual consent, however, an act of liquidation is generally appended to the divorce agreement (pending the approval of a f­ amily court judge). This act may or may not be found in archived files. Of the 853 uncontested divorces figuring in the “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database,” 440 had no liquidation. However, the fact that ­there is no act of liquidation does not mean that the ex-­spouses had no personal assets, a situation that is sometimes specified in the divorce agreement (when the ex-­spouses’ financial situation has to be given to justify the amount of a compensatory allowance). Ultimately, the data from uncontested divorce case files made it pos­si­ble to identify: 208 ­couples who jointly owned their primary residence and whose files specified how their joint assets would be liquidated, 254



Statistical Appendix I  255

34 ­couples whose marital home was a personal asset of the man, and 17 ­couples whose marital home was a personal asset of the ­woman. ­These files also told us the fate of 116 other real estate assets ­after the divorce. Analyzing uncontested divorce files thus lets us glimpse what becomes of real estate assets once ex-­spouses fi­nally set their wealth arrangements (see T ­ ables 4.1 and 4.2 in Chapter 4). Notice should be taken of the low proportion of ­couples that own their primary residence among c­ ouples divorcing by mutual consent (259 out of 853, which is less than one-­third, as compared to 60 ­percent of the population of France). This relatively low share may be explained by the sociodemographic characteristics of this subpopulation (it is relatively young, and homeownership rises with age), without the effects of ­these characteristics being obvious (­people in a ­couple, especially if married, are more likely than ­others to own their home). It may be explained by the choice of a rapid procedure, which is all the more appealing if ­there are no assets to divide, no c­ hildren, and so on. It is prob­ably also linked to the practice of selling the marital home in anticipation of the divorce, which allows the ­couple to avoid paying partitioning taxes when they do get divorced (see Chapter 5). In contested divorces, liquidation plans are sometimes established during the procedure in anticipation of conflict, or certain assets may be sold or attributed prior to the divorce judgment. Of the 767 contested divorce cases in the database, only 156 contain an act of liquidation (in 239 of the cases, the ex-­spouses declare they have no assets to divide, and in 331 the liquidation had not yet occurred). In 89 of the cases with information on the liquidation of jointly owned assets, the ex-­spouses owned their primary residence. In another 30 cases, the marital home was the personal property of one of the spouses (in 18 the man, in 12 the w ­ oman) and other marital assets had been distributed already or ­there ­were none to distribute. We set aside situations in which the primary residence was the personal property of one of the spouses and other ­couple’s jointly owned assets had not yet been liquidated. This last restriction was made out of concern for the comparability with uncontested divorce files: we retained only the cases without any ­future asset arrangements still to be made. This restriction does not guarantee an easy interpretation of the obtained results, however: the database needs further analy­sis to understand what distinguishes contested divorces whose act of liquidation had been established prior to the divorce from the o­ thers, especially where assets are concerned. For now, however,

256   Statistical Appendix I

­table i.1. ​Awarding of the marital home owned by ex-­spouse as part of a divorce All divorces (contested and uncontested)

Contested divorces Physical custody of at least one minor child awarded to the ­mother ­Others Sold Kept in indivision Awarded to the ­woman Awarded to the man Already the personal property of the ­woman Already the personal property of the man Total

All

Physical custody of at least one minor child awarded to the ­mother

­Others

All

32.6% 15 2.2% 1 30.4% 14 8.7% 4 13.0% 6

31.5% 23 1.4% 1 26.0% 19 16.4% 12 8.2% 6

31.9% 38 1.7% 2 27.7% 33 13.4% 16 10.1% 12

24.4% 33 6.7% 9 40.0% 54 11.9% 16 8.1% 11

22.6% 55 6.2% 15 23.5% 57 22.6% 55 8.6% 21

23.3% 88 6.3% 24 29.4% 111 18.8% 71 8.5% 32

13.0% 6

16.4% 12

15.1% 18

8.9% 12

16.5% 40

13.8% 52

46

73

119

135

243

378

Data source: “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (for information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H). Field: The files of 378 divorces concluded in 2013, where the ex-­spouse owned the marital home at the time of the divorce and for whom the partitioning of any joint property had already taken place. Read: “23.3 ­percent of primary residences owned by divorced ­couples ­were sold (88 cases).”

we can pre­sent our results on the fate of the marital home and other real estate assets from the study of contested divorce files (­Tables I.1 and I.2). ­These results do not modify the conclusions that came from the analy­sis of uncontested divorce files. The wide-­ranging time frames of divorce procedures and the fact that negotiations of wealth arrangements with notaires are made in parallel make it especially difficult to analyze what becomes of ex-­spouses’ assets. The French Wealth Survey became a panel survey in the 2014–2015 edition, and so some respondents w ­ ere questioned again for the 2017–2018 edition. It followed all persons living in the ­house­hold in the first edition, even if they had moved since. It was thus pos­si­ble to question both members



Statistical Appendix I  257

­table i.2. ​The fate of other real estate assets owned by the divorced spouses Fate of other real estate assets owned by spouses (secondary homes, rental properties, land, other) Sold Kept in indivision Awarded to the ­woman Awarded to the man Already the personal property of the ­woman Already the personal property of the man Total

Contested divorces Number

All divorces (contested and uncontested)

Percentage Number Percentage

10 7 11 19 16

12.2% 8.5% 13.4% 23.2% 19.5%

17 24 30 54 27

8.6% 12.1% 15.2% 27.3% 13.6%

19

23.2%

46

23.2%

82

100.0%

198

100.0%

Data source: “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (for information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H). Field: Real estate assets other than the primary residence owned by ­couples whose divorces ­were concluded in 2013 for whom the partitioning of any joint property had already taken place. Read: “8.6 ­percent of real estate assets other than the primary residence owned by divorced ­couples ­were sold (17 cases).”

of ­couples that had separated between the two surveys and give them a specific questionnaire on their assets in relation to the separation. The treatment of the survey’s results (still underway) ­will help us comprehend the state of wealth arrangements between ex-­spouses, regardless of the chosen l­egal path, according to how far back the separation goes. B ­ ecause the separations documented in the first edition of the questionnaire go back only three years or less, we ­will prob­ably have to wait for the subsequent edition to have information on c­ ouples that have truly settled, or at least begun to s­ ettle, their asset arrangements.

Statistical Appendix J When the Uncontested Divorce Agreement Is Not Approved

Of the 857 cases of divorce by mutual consent entered in the “4000 ­Family Cases Database,” 852 could be treated (the o­ thers ­were missing too much information). In 18 cases, the researchers entering the data indicated that the ex-­spouses’ agreement had not been approved by the judge. Data entry seems to have been somewhat erratic, however, as some researchers considered an agreement not approved when ­t here was no approval in the file ­because the procedure had been interrupted, regardless of the judge’s effective opinion on the agreement. More precisely, 808 cases ultimately saw the ex-­couple’s proposed divorce agreement approved. Of the 44 that d ­ idn’t: • 13 ­were refused ­because one or both of the ex-­spouses did not attend the hearing (one due to death); • 8 ­because the c­ ouple reconciled; • 12 ­because the judge refused to approve the agreement: —5 of which b­ ecause of inconsistencies or vagueness in the document; —2 b­ ecause it became clear in the hearing that the wife did not want to divorce; 258



Statistical Appendix J  259

—1 b­ ecause of a request to set a compensatory allowance; —1 b­ ecause of a request to pre­sent a new agreement with the required documentary evidence; —­Leaving 3 unexplained requests to pre­sent a new agreement; • 11 ­because the procedure was interrupted, for a variety of reasons (the w ­ oman filed a complaint against the man, thus interrupting the “mutual consent” pro­cess, the ­lawyer requested the case be withdrawn without a specific reason, and so on).

Ultimately, the judge refused to approve the ex-­spouses’ agreement in 12 of the 852 cases.

Statistical Appendix K Accounting for the Irregular Time Frames of Procedures and Wealth Arrangements

Using the “4000 ­Family Cases Database,” we ­were able to study 757 contested divorce files to a satisfactory extent (the other cases had e­ ither too much missing or inconsistent information). In 189 of ­these cases, procedures ­were cut short before the divorce decree was made (this happens for a wide variety of reasons: death of one of the spouses, a legally mandated deadline was missed, repeated absence of one or both spouses at the hearings, reconciliation, and so on). In 10 of ­these cases, a contract for liquidation of the marital regime had already been proposed before the case was halted. Of the 568 cases that ended with a divorce decree, only 26 ­percent (146) contained or indicated the existence of a contract for liquidation of the marital regime.

260

Statistical Appendix L Coding the Categories of Sex and Socioprofessional Position in the “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database”

The category of sex—­the binary gender to which a person is assigned in­de­ pen­dently of his or her gender identity—­has always been entered according to the sex (male or female) given on their civil status. This administrative sex is indicated in the divorce decree as well as in decisions concerning unmarried parents, by use of the titles Mister and Mrs. (Monsieur et Madame), and in the civil status documents pre­sent in the file (­children’s birth certificates, marriage certificates, the official ­family rec­ord booklet called the livret de famille). The socioprofessional category was coded using the vari­ous resources available in the files, favoring the most recent, using INSEE’s nomenclature for socioprofessional categories (see Appendix D for a detailed pre­sen­ ta­tion). We based our classification on the following sources, which w ­ ere found in the files to varying degrees: • References to occupation found in civil status documents (marriage certificates, birth certificates) • References to occupation from court rulings, ­legal briefs, and documentary evidence 261

262   Statistical Appendix L

• Incomes indicated in rulings, briefs, and documentary evidence • Assets mentioned in rulings, briefs, and documentary evidence

Combining t­ hese sources can be useful: for example, a reference to professional property tells us if a “mason” should be classified ­under “Tradespeople, Shop­keep­ers, and Business Heads” rather than as a “Laborer,” and knowing that a civil servant earns 5,000 euros a month lets us know that he or she can be put down as a “cadre.” The most difficult situations to classify ­were: • “Agents” working for the national or local government, without any reference to their position in the professional hierarchy • “Temporary workers” or “Limited-­term employment contract” without any further information • Occupations in the trades (“mason,” “plumber,” “hairdresser”) without further information on ­whether they worked for some­ ­one ­else or had their own business

­ fter examining the distribution of ­people in the sampled files by socioA professional group across the entire database and comparing the result to the general population, we noticed a relative under-­representation of laborers in our sample, and an over-­representation of self-­employed business ­owners. So when the question came up, we considered ­people in the trades whose owner­ship of professional assets or status as business owner ­were unknown, as laborers. For the other two scenarios, we considered them “occupation unknown.” In the end, we w ­ ere able to categorize 82 ­percent of ­these ­people according to PCS. Of the 18 ­percent whose PCS was unknown, 5 ­percent ­were nonretired nonworkers, and 8 ­percent w ­ ere employed, unemployed, or retired persons whose last occupation was unknown. This leaves 5 ­percent of the sample of which we know nothing of the occupation or employment situation (employed, unemployed, retired, other nonworking).

Ethnographic and Archival Sources

Chapter 2 Interview with Claire Coulemelle conducted by Sibylle Gollac, January 2002. Interview with Sylvain Coulemelle conducted by Sibylle Gollac, October 2001. Pilon ­family case study: consultation of private archives, observations, and interviews conducted by Sibylle Gollac between 2001 and 2003. Recorded interview with Alain Coulemelle conducted by Sibylle Gollac, May 2002. Recorded interview with Sabrina Legendre conducted by Sibylle Gollac, May 2005. Recorded interview with Éric Le Vennec conducted by Sibylle Gollac, April 2002. Recorded interview with Jeanne Le Vennec conducted by Sibylle Gollac, January 2002. Recorded interview with Roseline Pilon conducted by Sibylle Gollac, March 2002. Recorded interview with Christine Saignole conducted by Sibylle Gollac, May 2005. Sibylle Gollac’s field journal entries: 04/08/2005, 08/05/2006, 10/30/2006, 01/05/2007, 07/28/2007, 08/01/2007, 05/07/2008, 08/23/2008, 01/18/2009, 07/08/2009, 07/23/2009, 12/27/2010, 02/22/2012.

Chapter 3 Consultation of “a well-­surrounded CEO” divorce file in a ­family court (southeastern France) by Céline Bessière and Émilie Biland, March 2010. Informal discussions with ­lawyer Grâce Dupont-­Bernard in the gaps between client meetings at her office (western France) reported by Céline Bessière, February 2014. Interview with l­awyer Carole Jouve at her office in Paris conducted by Anna Chamfrault and Sibylle Gollac, November 2014.

263

264   Ethnographic and Archival Sources

Observation in the office of Judge Brigitte Cigliano at the Paris Court of Appeals by Céline Bessière, December 2014. Observation of a training session on collaborative law in a Bar (western France) by Camille Bertin, Sibylle Gollac, and Gabrielle Schütz, February 2014. Observation of four lawyer-­client meetings at Grâce Dupont-­Bernard’s office (western France) by Céline Bessière and Camille Phé, February 2014. Observation of the Brahimi case during a hearing of Judge Jean Brunetti at f­ amily court (southeastern France) by Hélène Steinmetz, March 2010. Observation of the meeting between Ginette Durand and her ­lawyer, Grâce Dupont-­Bernard, at the latter’s office (western France) by Céline Bessière and Camille Phé, February 2014. Observation of the meeting between Nathalie Mougins and her l­awyer, Michèle Abitbol, at the latter’s office (western France) by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, February 2016. Recorded interview with Jeanne Le Vennec conducted by Sibylle Gollac, January 2002. Recorded interview with Judge Brigitte Cigliano at her office at the Paris Court of Appeals conducted by Catherine Achin and Émilie Biland, November 2014. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Yves Le Floch at his office (western France) conducted by Camille Bertin and Gabrielle Schütz, February 2014. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Cécile Martin-­Dubois at her office in Paris, conducted by Céline Bessière, Aurore Koechlin and Camille Phé, November 2014. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Clotilde Reymbaut-­Dawkins at her office in Paris conducted by Muriel Mille, December 2014. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Arnaud Thiercelin at his office (western France) conducted by Anaïs Bonanno, Sibylle Gollac, and Aurore Koechlin, February 2014. Recorded interview with notaire Jean-­Pierre Chartrain at his office in Paris conducted by Céline Bessière, January 2015. Recorded interview with notaire Sébastien Dargy at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015. Recorded interview with notaire Cédric Le Guen at his office in Normandy conducted by Céline Bessière, January 2015. Recorded interview with notaire Jérôme Poly at his office (western France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, February 2016. Recorded interview with notaire Marc Pouget at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015.

Chapter 4 Consultation of a mutual consent divorce file at Paris f­ amily court by Lucile Piedfer, June 2013.



Ethnographic and Archival Sources  265

Interview with l­awyer Catherine Bulle at the Paris Court of Appeals conducted by Sibylle Gollac and Camille Phé, November 2014. Interview with notaire Pierre Delmas conducted by Sibylle Gollac, December 2014. Observation of lawyer-­client meetings at Michèle Abitbol’s office (western France) by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, February 2016. Participant observation at a research seminar on “inheritance waivers” at Pantheon-­ Assas Law University in Paris by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, February 2016. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Anne Prisot-­Gallot in Paris conducted by Aurore Koechlin and Gabrielle Schütz; written nine-­page memo sent by the l­awyer to the research group a­ fter the interview, February 2014. Recorded interview with notaire Jacques Bulond at his office on the outskirts of Paris conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, June 2016. Recorded interview with notaire Christophe Lebourg at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015. Recorded interview with notaire Bernard Lecart at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015. Recorded interview with notaire Marc Pouget at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015. Ruffaut / Pourquerie case: divorce file, liquidation of the marriage property act, and deed of sale of the marital home consulted by Céline Bessière in a f­ amily court (western France), March 2016.

Chapter 5 ­ amily judge ruling, dated December 17, 2013, consulted by Sibylle Gollac. F Interview with Antoine Dufournel conducted by Sibylle Gollac, January 2008. Interview with l­awyer Michèle Abitbol at her office (western France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Gabrielle Schütz, February 2016. Interview with the Secretary General of the Paris notarial school at a notarial professional meeting in Paris conducted by Sibylle Gollac, December 2004. Letter from Antoine Dufournel to his b­ rother, Roland, dated May 13, 2008, consulted by Sibylle Gollac. Letter from Antoine Dufournel’s l­awyer to his client dated January 28, 2008, consulted by Sibylle Gollac. Letter from Jean-­Pierre Dufournel to his siblings dated June 22, 2007, consulted by Sibylle Gollac. Letter from Roland Dufournel to his b­ rother, Antoine, dated May 7, 2008, consulted by Sibylle Gollac. Observation of a collaborative procedure lawyer-­client meeting at ­lawyer Arnaud Thiercelin’s office (western France), with also ­lawyer Grâce Dupont-Bernard and their clients Marc and Isabelle Cousin, by Céline Bessière and Aurore Koechlin, February 2014.

266   Ethnographic and Archival Sources

Observation of a ­family court hearing in the Pa­ri­sian region by Benjamin Faure and Hélène Steinmetz, January 2010. Observation of a meeting between Valérie Parienly and her l­awyer, Carole Jouve, at the latter’s office in Paris by Anna Chamfrault and Sibylle Gollac, November 2014. Observation of a training session sponsored by the Paris Bar devoted to “wealth management and taxation issues in family-­law negotiations” by Hélène Steinmetz and Gabrielle Schütz, December 2014. Recorded interview with ­lawyer Sophie Carsalade at her office (eastern France) conducted by Sibylle Gollac and Raphaëlle Salem, February 2009. Recorded interview with notaire Jérôme Poly at his office (western France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, February2016. Registered letter from Antoine Dufournel to the notaire in charge of his f­ ather’s succession, entitled “Reservations and dissent regarding the notice of closure of the inventory” dated March 18, 2008, consulted by Sibylle Gollac.

Chapter 6 Consultation of a divorce file archived in 2007 in a f­ amily court of the Pa­ri­sian region by Wilfried Lignier, May 2009. Consultation of a divorce file archived in 2007 in a f­ amily court (southeastern France) by Céline Bessière and Alina Surubaru, March 2010. Consultation of the Callies divorce file in a f­ amily court (eastern France) by Céline Bessière, February 2009. Consultation of the Landreau divorce file and observation of a hearing of Judge Dominique Bernay at a Court of Appeals (western France) by Céline Bessière, Abigail Bourguignon, and Romain Piketty, January 2014. Consultation of the Rosio-­Petit divorce file at the Paris Court of Appeals by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, December 2014. Interview with a f­ amily judge at the Paris court conducted by Sibylle Gollac, January 2015. Interview with Judge Florence Simonin at her office at the Court of Appeals (western France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Nicolas Rafin, November 2013. Interview with l­awyer Catherine Bulle at the Paris Court of Appeals conducted by Sibylle Gollac and Camille Phé, November 2014. Observation of a hearing at the Paris Court of Appeals by Céline Bessière and Vanessa Codaccioni, November 2014. Observation of the meeting between Stéphanie Berland accompanied by her f­ ather and her ­lawyer, Michèle Abitbol, at the latter’s office (western France) by Céline Bessière and Gabrielle Schütz, February 2016. Recorded interview with Judge Dominique Bernay-­Châtel at her office at the Court of Appeals (western France) conducted by Céline Bessière, Abigail Bourguignon, and Romain Piketty, February 2014.



Ethnographic and Archival Sources  267

Recorded interview with Judge Jean Brunetti conducted by Hélène Steinmetz, March 2010. Recorded interview with notaire Bernard Lecart at his office (southwestern France) conducted by Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, October 2015.

Chapter 7 Consultation of the Dubois-­Abbadi file and observation of a hearing of Judge Yves Defert at a f­ amily court in the Pa­ri­sian region by Céline Bessière and Jérémy Mandin, March 2009. Observation of a conference on child support held by the Toulouse Bar (southwestern France) by Céline Bessière and Muriel Mille, October 2014. Observation of a hearing of Judge Catherine Blanchard at a ­family court in the Pa­ri­sian region by Céline Bessière and Sabrina Nouri-­Mangold, December 2009. Observation of a hearing of Judge Étienne Paletot at a ­family court (eastern France) by Céline Bessière and Aurélie Fillod-­Chabaud, February 2009. Observation of the Boulin-­Martinez case during a hearing of Judge Anna de Mattéi at a ­family court in the Pa­ri­sian region by Marion Azuelos and Hélène Steinmetz, March 2009. Observation of the Diakité-­Dembélé case during a hearing of Judge Anna de Mattéi at a ­family court in the Pa­ri­sian region by Marion Azuelos and Hélène Steinmetz, March 2009. Observation of two ­family desertion cases during the hearing of Judge Benoît Artigues at a criminal court in metropolitan Paris by Céline Bessière, November 2013. Recorded interview with Judge Benoît Artigues at his office at a criminal court in metropolitan Paris conducted by Céline Bessière, Aurore Koechlin, and Ariane Richardot, November 2013. Recorded interview with Judge Sandrine Cabernet conducted by Alina Surubaru and Élodie Hennequin, March 2010. Recorded interview with Judge Yves Defert conducted by Émilie Biland and Jérémy Mandin, March 2009.

Notes

Preface to the En­glish Edition 1. Relevant publications include Laura M. Giurge, Ashley V. Whillans, and Ayse Yemiscigil, “A Multicountry Perspective on Gender Differences in Time Use during COVID-19,” Proceedings of the National Acad­emy of Sciences 118, no. 12 (2021), https://­w ww​.­pnas​.­org​/­doi​/­10​.­1073​/­pnas​.­2018494118; Nathalie Bajos, Emilie Counil, Jeanna-­Eve Franck, Florence Jussot, Ariane Pailhé, Alexis Spire, Claude Martin, Nathalie Lydie, Remy Slama, Laurence Meyer, and Josiane Warszawski, “Social Inequalities and Dynamics of the Early COVID-19 Epidemic: A Prospective Cohort Study in France,” BMJ Open 11, no. 11 (2021), https://­bmjopen​.­bmj​.­com​/­content​/­11​/­11​/­e052888; Emily Leslie and Riley Wilson, “Sheltering in Place and Domestic Vio­lence: Evidence from Calls for Ser­vice during COVID-19,” Journal of Public Economics 189 (2020), https://­w ww​.­ncbi​.­nlm​.­nih​.­gov​/­pmc​/­a rticles​/­PMC7377795​/­; Jordan Kisner, “The Lockdown Showed How the Economy Exploits ­Women. She Already Knew,” interview with Silvia Federici, New York Times Magazine, February 17, 2021; Amy Clair, “Homes, Health and COVID-19: How Poor Housing Adds to the Hardship of the Coronavirus Crisis,” Social Market Foundation (blog), April 2, 2020, https://­w ww​.­smf​.­co​.­u k​/­commentary​_­podcasts​/­homes​-­health​ -­a nd​-­covid​-­19​-­how​-­poor​-­housing​-­adds​-­to​-­the​-­hardship​-­of​-­the​-­coronavirus​ -­crisis​/­; Anna Pederson, “Pandemic Brings New Mission to Ensure Housing for Every­one,” interview with Matthew Desmond, Street Roots, May 8, 2020; Céline Bessière, Emilie Biland, Sibylle Gollac, Pascal Marichalar, and Julie Minoc, “Penser la famille aux temps du Covid-19,” Mouvements: Des Idées et des Luttes, June 8, 2020.

269

270   NOTES TO PAGES X–4

2. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 3. Mike Savage, The Return of In­equality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021). 4. Silvia Federici, Wages against House­work (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1975); Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard, Familiar Exploitation: A New Analy­sis of Marriage in Con­temporary Western Socie­ties (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992).

Introduction 1. Our portrait of Ingrid Levavasseur is based on several media reports, especially Audrey Clier, “Qui est Ingrid Levavasseur, figure nationale des gilets jaunes originaire de Pont-­de-­l ’Arche?,” Paris-­Normandie, January 12, 2019; Virginie Ballet, “Ingrid Levavasseur, rond-­point en suspension,” Libération, April 1, 2019; Ségolène Forgar, “Ingrid Levavasseur: ‘Être une femme célibataire est une galère au quotidien,’ ” Madame Figaro, April 11, 2019. 2. Marie-­A mélie Lombard-­L atune and Christine Ducros, “Ces femmes ‘gilets jaunes’ qui ont investi les ronds-­points,” Le Figaro, December 13, 2018; Emmanuelle Lucas, “Des mères isolées ont porté le ‘gilet jaune,’ ” La Croix, March 7, 2019; “Des centaines de femmes ‘gilets jaunes’ manifestent dans plusieurs villes de France,” Le Monde, January 6, 2019. 3. Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in Amer­i­ca (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015); Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Crown, 2016); Ana Perrin-­Herredia, “La gestion du bud­get: Un pouvoir paradoxal pour les femmes de classe populaire,” in Le monde privé des femmes: Genre et habitat dans la société française, ed. Anne Lambert, Pascale Dietrich-­R agon, and Catherine Bonvalet (Paris: INED Editions, 2018), 193–210. 4. The portrait of MacKenzie Scott is based on several media reports, most prominently Rebecca Johnson, “MacKenzie Bezos: Writer, M ­ other of Four, and High-­Profile Wife,” Vogue, February 20, 2013; Jonah Engel Bromwich and Alexandra Alter, “Who Is MacKenzie Bezos?,” New York Times, January 12, 2019. 5. Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos), “We want to make ­people aware . . . ,” Twitter, January 9, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​/­jeffbezos​/­status​/­1083004911380393985. 6. Laura M. Holson, “Jeff Bezos of Amazon and MacKenzie Bezos Plan to Divorce,” New York Times, January 9, 2019; Lauren Feiner, “How the Bezos Divorce Could Impact Amazon Shareholders,” CNBC, January 9, 2019. 7. MacKenzie Scott (@mackenziescott), “Grateful to have finished the pro­ cess . . . ,” April 4, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​/­mackenziescott​/­status​/­11138512​ 600 ​4 0503296​/­photo​/­1; Karen Weise, “Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, and MacKenzie Bezos Finalize Divorce Details,” New York Times, April 4, 2019.



NOTES TO PAGES 4–7  271

8. Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anx­i­eties of Affluence (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­­­­ton University Press, 2017); Camille Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche: Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients (Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau, 2019), 69. 9. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 10. The “crumbling of the wage-­earning society” is an idea developed by Robert Castel in From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers: Transformation of the Social Question (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 408. See also Arum Richard and Walter Müller, eds., The Re-­emergence of Self-­Employment (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004). 11. In the United States: Caitlin Zaloom, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019); in France: Arnaud Parienty, School Business: Comment l’argent dynamite le système éducatif (Paris: La Découverte, 2015). 12. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and ­Family Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 13. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: House­work, Reproduction, and Feminist Strug­gle (Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions / PM Press, 2012). 14. Silvia Federici, Wages against House­work (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1975); Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard, Familiar Exploitation: A New Analy­sis of Marriage in Con­temporary Western Socie­ties (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992). 15. Alice Kessler-­Harris, ­Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Review (New York: Feminist Press, 1981); Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989). 16. Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, The Power of ­Women and the Sub­ version of the Community (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1972); Federici, Revolution at Point Zero. 17. Marylyn Waring, If ­Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics (San Fran­­cisco: Harper and Row, 1988). 18. Benjamin Bridgeman, “Accounting for House­hold Production in the National Accounts: An Update, 1965–2014,” Survey of Current Business 96, no. 2 (2016): 1–5; Aurélien Poissonnier and Delphine Roy, “House­hold Satellite Account for France: Methodological Issues on the Assessment of Domestic Production,” Review of Income and Wealth 63, no. 2 (2017): 353–377. 19. Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz, and Maria Stanfors, “The ­Great Convergence? Gender and Unpaid Work in Eu­rope and in the United States,” Population and Development Review 47, no. 1 (2021): 181–217. See also Jay Gershuny and Oriel ­Sullivan, What We R ­ eally Do All Day: Insights from the Centre for Time Use Research (London: Penguin, 2019). 20. Pailhé, Solaz, and Stanfors, “The ­Great Convergence?,” ­table 4 (“Daily House­­ work Time”), 198–199.

272   NOTES TO PAGES 7–9

21. Pailhé, Solaz, and Stanfors, “The ­Great Convergence?,” ­table 4, 198–199. 22. Pailhé, Solaz, and Stanfors, “The ­Great Convergence?,” ­table 4, 198–199. 23. Source: INSEE, French Time-­Use Survey (“Emploi du temps”); Delphine Roy, “Le travail domestique: 60 milliards d’heures en 2010,” INSEE Première 1423 (2012). 24. Ann Oakley, The Sociology of House­work (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, [1974] 1985); Caitlyn Collins, Making Motherhood Work: How ­Women Manage ­Careers and Caregiving (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019). 25. The ­mental load is the psychological burden of responsibilities related to ­house­hold and professional duties, including planning and scheduling tasks as well as their completion. This means, for example, thinking about what to make for dinner while still at work, what groceries are needed, when to shop and cook while also having to pick the kids up at school, take them to extracurricular activities, and help them with their homework. The concept was developed by second-­wave feminists and has recently been pop­u ­lar­ized by the French cartoonist Emma (The M ­ ental Load: A Feminist Comic [New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018]). 26. Hochschild and Machung, The Second Shift. 27. Claudia Goldin, ­Career and ­Family: ­Women’s Century-­Long Journey ­toward Equity (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2021). 28. Siv Gustafsson and Danièle Meulders, eds., Gender and the ­Labor Market: Econometric Evidence on Obstacles in Achieving Gender Equality (London: Macmillan, 2000). 29. Susan Milner, Sophie Pochic, Alexandra Scheele, and Sue Williamson, eds., “Gender Pay Gaps,” special issue, Gender, Work and Organ­ization 26, no. 5 (2019). 30. Milner, et al., “Gender Pay Gaps.” 31. For a comparison of Eu­ro­pean countries, see Eva Sierminska, Wealth and Gender in Eu­rope: Report for the Eu­ro­pean Commission (Luxembourg: Publication Office of the Eu­ro­pean Union, 2017). For a study in the United States, see Mariko L. Chang, Shortchanged: Why W ­ omen Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done about It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). For an international comparison including developing countries, see Carmen Diana Deere and Cheryl Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap: What Do We Know and Why Does It ­Matter?,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 1–50. 32. OECD, Closing the Gender Gap: Act Now (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2012); Eva Sierminska, Daniela Piazzalunga, and Marcus Grabka, “Transitioning ­towards More Equality? Wealth Gender Differences and the Changing Role of Explana­­ tory Factors over Time,” GLO Discussion Paper no. 252 (Maastricht: Global ­L abor Organ­ization, 2018). 33. Alexis Yamokoski and Lisa Keister, “The Wealth of Single W ­ omen: Marital Status and Parenthood in the Asset Accumulation of Young Baby Boomers in the United States,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 167–194; Chang,



NOTES TO PAGES 9–12  273

Shortchanged; Siobhan Austen, Therese Jeerson, and Rachel Ong, “The Gender Gap in Financial Security: What We Know and ­Don’t Know about Australian House­holds,” Feminist Economics 20, no. 3 (2014): 25–52; Alyssa Schneebaum, Miriam Rehm, Katharina Mader, and Katarina Hollan, “The Gender Wealth Gap across Eu­ro­pean Countries,” Review of Income and Wealth 64, no. 2 (2018): 295–331; Tracey Warren, “Moving beyond the Gender Wealth Gap: On Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and Wealth Inequalities in the United Kingdom,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 195–219. 34. Eva Sierminska, Joaquim Frick, and Markus Grabka, “Examining the Gender Wealth Gap,” Oxford Economic Papers 62, no. 4 (2010): 669–690; Markus Grabka, Jan Marcus, and Eva Sierminska, “Wealth Distribution within ­Couples,” Review of Economics of the House­hold 13, no. 3 (2015): 459–486; Philipp Lersch, “The Marriage Wealth Premium Revisited: Gender Disparities and Within-­Individual Changes in Personal Wealth in Germany,” Demography 54 (2017): 961–983. 35. Sierminska, Piazzalunga, and Grabka, “Transitioning t­ owards More Equality?” 36. Sierminska, Piazzalunga, and Grabka, “Transitioning t­ owards More Equality?” 37. Since 1998, the French national ­house­hold wealth survey (i.e., the French Wealth Survey) has included self-­reported information on the value and owner­ship of assets within the ­house­hold, as well as information on marital regimes, which determine property owner­ship. See Carole Bonnet, Alice Keogh, and Benoît Rapoport, “How Can We Explain the Gender Wealth Gap in France?,” INED Working Paper 191 (Paris: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 2013), http://­hdl​.­handle​.­net​/­20​.­500​.­12204​/­AWRH​ -­yaPgpz89Adag5SW; Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Prenuptial Agreements and Matrimonial Property Regimes in France (1855–2010),” Explorations in Economic History 68 (2018): 132–142. 38. INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, http://­w ww​ .­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=l­il​-­1150; Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Inequalities and the Individualization of Wealth,” Journal of Public Economics 184 (2020): 104–145. 39. Jane Humphries, “Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century” [review of T. Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century], Feminist Economics 21, no. 1 (2015): 164–173. 40. Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2005). 41. Florence Weber, “Settings, Interactions and ­Things: A Plea for Multi-­Integrative Ethnography,” Ethnography 2, no. 4 (2001): 475–499. 42. Pseudonyms ­were chosen based on similar frequency in the same birth year. Place-­names ­were changed to sociodemographically similar names to hide the ­actual location as much as pos­si­ble. 43. Jon B. Gould and Scott Barclay, “Mind the Gap: The Place of Gap Studies in Sociolegal Scholarship,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8 (2012):

274   NOTES TO PAGES 12–19

323–335; Rebecca Sandefur, “Access to Civil Justice and Race, Class and Gender In­equality,” Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 339–358. 44. Sandefur, “Access to Civil Justice and Race,” 352. 45. A description of the research team and its work can be found at http://­justines​ .­cnrs​.­fr​/­les​-­actualites​/­le​-­genre​-­du​-­capital​/­. 46. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The F ­ amily Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977). 47. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, [1994] 1998).

1. The ­Family as an Economic Institution 1. According to the Nielsen ratings, which do not include viewers on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube (Nielsen, “First Presidential Debate of 2016 Draws 84 Million Viewers,” https://­w ww​.­nielsen​.­com​/­us​/­en​/­insights​/­a rticle​/­2016​/­first​ -­presidential​-­debate​-­of​-­2016​-­draws​-­84​-­million​-­viewers​/­). 2. Transcript of the televised debate, September 26, 2016 (NPR, “Fact Check: Clinton and Trump Debate for the First Time,” https://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​/­2016​/­09​ /­26​/­495115346​/­fact​-­check​-­first​-­presidential​-­debate​?­t ​=­1622537178914). 3. NPR, “Fact Check.” 4. Peter Grant and Peter Nicholas, “Trump’s F ­ ather Helped GOP Candidate with Numerous Loans,” Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2016. 5. David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches from His F ­ ather,” New York Times, October 2, 2018. 6. Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger, and Anu Narayanswamy, “2 Clintons. 41 Years. $3 Billion,” Washington Post, November 19, 2015. 7. Philippe Steiner, “Egalitarian Heritage as a Social Device,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Sociology 46, no. 1 (2005): 127–149. 8. Alexis de Tocqueville, “Influence of Democracy on Kindred,” in Democracy in Amer­i­ca (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, [1840] 2002), 654. 9. Émile Durkheim, “The Conjugal ­Family,” in On Institutional Analy­sis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1892] 2013), 235. 10. Durkheim, “The Conjugal ­Family,” 234. 11. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 12. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, trans. Robert Baldick (London: Pimlico, [1960] 1996). 13. Lawrence Stone, The F ­ amily, Sex and Marriage in E ­ ngland, 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977). 14. Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern F ­ amily (New York: Basic Books, 1975).



NOTES TO PAGES 19–22  275

15. Alfred Chandler, The Vis­i­ble Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 16. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1972] 1977); Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, [1980] 1990); Bourdieu, The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [2003] 2008). 17. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-­Claude Passeron, The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relations to Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1964] 1979). 18. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-­Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, [1970] 1977). 19. Paul DiMaggio, “On Pierre Bourdieu,” American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 6 (1979): 1466; Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski, and Monique de Saint-­Martin, “Les stratégies de reconversion. Les classes sociales et le système d’enseigne­ ment,” Social Sciences Information 12, no. 5 (1973): 88. 20. François de Singly, Sociologie de la famille contemporaine (Paris: Nathan, 1993), 23. 21. Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason, Passing On: Kinship and Inheritance in ­England (London: Routledge, 2000). 22. Danielle Debordeaux and Pierre Strobel, eds., Les solidarités familiales en questions. Entraide et transmission (Paris: LGDJ, 2002). 23. Gabrielle Fack, Julien Grenet, and Yinghua He, “Beyond Truth-­Telling: Preference Estimation with Centralized School Choice and College Admissions,” American Economic Review 109, no. 4 (2019): 1486–1529. 24. Caitlin Zaloom, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019); Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Indentured Students: How Government-­Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021). 25. Fabian T. Pfeffer, “Growing Wealth Gaps in Education,” Demography 55, no. 3 (2018): 1033–1068. 26. Arthur Bauer, Bertrand Garbinti, and Simon Georges-­Kot, “Financial Constraints and Self-­Employment in France,” INSEE Working Paper, G2018 / 08, 2018; David Evans and Linda Leighton, “Some Empirical Aspects of Entrepreneurship,” American Economic Review, no. 3 (1989): 519–535; Marianne Nordli Hansen and Maren Toft, “Wealth Accumulation and Opportunity Hoarding: Class-­Origin Wealth Gaps over a Quarter of a ­Century in a Scandinavian Country,” American So­cio­log­i­cal Review 86, no. 4 (2021): 1–36; Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy, “Classification Situations: Life-­Chances in the Neoliberal Era,” Accounting, Organ­izations and Society 38 (2013): 559–572. 27. INSEE, “Enquête emploi” (­Labor Force Survey), 2015; Laure Omalek and Laurence Rioux, “Emploi et revenus des indépendants,” INSEE Références, 2015. 28. Richard Arum and Walter Müller, eds., The Re-­emergence of Self-­Employment (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2004).

276   NOTES TO PAGES 22–23

29. Juliet Shor, ­After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021); Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019); Stephanie Taylor and Susan Luckman, The New Normal of Working Lives: Critical Studies in Con­temporary Work and Employment (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 30. Lisa Adkins and Maryanne Dever, The Post-­Fordist Sexual Contract: Working and Living in Contingency (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Robert Geoffee and Richard Scase, ­Women in Charge: The Experiences of Female Entrepreneurs (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985); Candida Brush and Robert Hisrich, “Antecedent Influences on Women-­O wned Businesses,” Journal of Managerial Psy­chol­ogy 6, no. 2 (1991): 9–16. 31. Dan Andrews and Aida Caldera Sánchez, “The Evolution of Homeownership Rates in Selected OECD Countries: Demographic and Public Policy Influences,” OECD Journal: Economic Studies 2011, no. 1 (2011), http://­d x​.­doi​.­org​/­10​ .­1787​/­eco​_­studies​-­2011​-­5kg0vswqpmg2. 32. Laurent Gobillon, Anne Lambert, and Sandra Pellet, The Suburbanization of Poverty: Homeownership Policies and Spatial Inequalities in France (Paris: INED, 2019). 33. Fanny Bugeja-­Bloch, “Housing Crisis, Generational Inequalities and Welfare Regime: Comparative Study between France and the United Kingdom,” in Consumption and Generational Change: The Rise of Consumer Lifestyles, ed. Ian Rees Jones, Paul Higgs, and David J. Ekerdt (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 129–148. 34. Seymour Spilerman and François-­Charles Wolff, “Parental Wealth and Resource Transfers: How They ­Matter in France for Home Owner­ship and Living Standards,” Social Science Research 41, no. 2 (2012): 207–223. 35. Ray Forrest and Ngai-­Ming Yip, eds., Young P ­ eople and Housing: Transitions, Trajectories and Generational Fractures (London: Routledge, 2012). 36. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century; Branco Milanovic, Global In­equality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). See also Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman (coords.), World In­equality Report 2022, https://­wir2022​.­wid​ .­world ​/­ www​-­site​/­uploads​/­2021​/­12 ​/­ WorldInequalityReport2022​_­Full​_­Report​ .­pdf. 37. Chancel et al., World In­equality Report 2022, 10. 38. Chancel et al., World In­equality Report 2022, 12. 39. Øyvind N. Wiborg and Marianne N. Hansen, “The Scandinavian Model during Increasing In­equality: Recent Trends in Educational Attainment, Earnings and Wealth among Norwegian Siblings,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 56 (2018): 53–63. 40. Chancel et al., World In­equality Report 2022, 193.



NOTES TO PAGES 23–26  277

41. Facundo Alvaredo, Bertrand Garbinti and Thomas Piketty, “On the Share of Inheritance in Aggregate Wealth: Eu­rope and the USA, 1900–2010,” Econo­ mica 84 (2017): 237–260. 42. Alvaredo, Garbinti, and Piketty, “On the Share of Inheritance.” 43. Bertrand Garbinti, Jonathan Goupille-­L ebret, and Thomas Piketty, “Income In­equality in France, 1900–2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA),” Journal of Public Economics 162, no. C (2018): 63–77. 44. Fabian T. Pfeffer and Alexandra Killewald, “Generations of Advantage: Multigenerational Correlations in F ­ amily Wealth,” Social Forces 96, no. 4 (2018): 1411–1442. 45. Meizhu Lui, Bárbara J. Robles, Betsy Leondar-­Wright, Rose M. Bre­were, and Rebecca Adamson, with United for a Fair Economy, The Color of Wealth: The Story ­behind the US Racial Wealth Divide (New York: New Press, 2006). 46. Figures from an analy­sis of the US Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Con­­ sumer Finances by Rakesh Kochhar and Anthony Chilluffo, “How Wealth In­equality Has Changed in the U.S. since the ­Great Recession, by Race, Ethnicity and Income,” Pew Research Center, 2017, https://­w ww​.­pewresearch​ .­org​/­fact​-­tank ​/­2017​/­11​/­01​/­how​-­wealth​-­inequality​-­has​-­changed​-­in​-­the​-­u​-­s​-­since​ -­the​-­great​-­recession​-­by​-­race​-­ethnicity​-­a nd​-­income​/­. 47. Maury Gittleman and Edward N. Wolff, “Racial Differences in Pattern of Wealth Accumulation,” Journal of H ­ uman Resources 39, no. 1 (2004): 193–227; Signe-­Mary McKernan, Caroline Ratcliffe, Margaret Simms, and Sisi Zhang, “Do Racial Disparities in Private Transfers Help Explain the Racial Wealth Gap? New Evidence from Longitudinal Data,” Demography 51, no. 3 (2014): 949–974. 48. Thomas M. Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates In­equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 49. Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans and How We Can Fix It (New York: Crown: 2021). 50. Patrick Simon, “The Choice of Ignorance: The Debate on Ethnic and Racial Statistics in France,” French Politics, Culture & Society 26, no. 1 (2008): 7–31. 51. Cris Beauchemin, Christelle Hamel, and Patrick Simon, eds., Trajectories and Origins: Survey on the Diversity of the French Population (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018). 52. Margot Delon, “Des ‘blancs honoraires’? Les trajectoires sociales des Portugais et de leurs descendants en France,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 228 (2019): 4–28. 53. Marie Cartier, Isabelle Coutant, Olivier Masclet, and Yasmine Siblot, The France of the Little-­Middles: A Suburban Housing Development in Greater Paris, trans. Juliette Rogers (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016). 54. INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2009–2010, https://­w ww​ .­insee​.­fr​/­fr​/­metadonnees​/­source​/­operation​/­s1363​/­presentation; Bertrand Garbinti, Pierre Lamarche, and Laurianne Salembier, “Héritages, donations et

278   NOTES TO PAGES 26–28

aides aux ascendants et descendants,” in Le Revenu et le Patrimoine des Mé­­nages, édition 2012 (Paris: INSEE, 2012), https://­w ww​.­insee​.­fr​/­fr​/­statistiques​/­1373959​ ?­sommaire​=­1373966. 55. This was calculated as follows: The French Philanthropy Observatory esti­­ mated that French nonprofits received approximately 1 billion euros in 2016. The same year, an estimated 250 billion euros ­were transferred by inter vivos gift or inheritance. See also Daniel Bruneau, Laurence de Nervaux, Jean-­ François Tchernia, and Alix Pornon, “Pa­norama national des générosités,” April 2018, Observatoire de la Philanthropie of the Fondation de France, https://­w ww​.­fondationdefrance​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/­atoms​/­files​/­observatoire​ _­panorama​_ ­generosites​.­pdf; Clément Dherbecourt, “Peut-on eviter une société d’héritiers?,” France Stratégie, La Note d’Analyse 51 (2017): 3. 56. See US Federal Reserve Board, “Survey of Consumer Finances,” from 1989 to 2007. Edward Wolff and Maury Gittleman, “Inheritances and the Distribution of Wealth, or What­ever Happened to the G ­ reat Inheritance Boom?,” Journal of Economic In­equality 12, no. 4 (2014): 446. Parents w ­ ere the source of 69 ­percent of wealth transfers received, 19 ­percent came from grandparents, and 22 ­percent came from other relatives; only 4 ­percent of wealth transfers came from ­people outside of the ­family. 57. Merlin Schaeffer, “The Social Meaning of Inherited Financial Assets: Moral Ambivalences of Intergenerational Transfers,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 39, no. 3 (2014): 289–317. 58. Nicolas Frémeaux, Les nouveaux héritiers (Paris: Seuil, 2018), 27–29. 59. Frémeaux, Les nouveaux héritiers, 29. 60. Jérôme Bourdieu, Lionel Kesztenbaum, Gilles Postel-­Vinay, and Akiko Suwa-­Eisenmann, “Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in France, 19th and 20th ­Century,” Review of Income and Wealth 65, no. 1 (2019): 21–47. 61. INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2003–2004, http://­w ww​ .­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​-­0250b​.­x ml; André Masson, “Famille et héritage: Quelle liberté de tester?,” Revue Française d’Économie 21, no. 2 (2006): 90. This paper uses the French nomenclature for occupations and socioprofessional categories; for details, see Appendix D. For a definition of the “person of reference,” see Appendix E. 62. Frémeaux, Les nouveaux héritiers, 30. 63. Masson, “Famille et héritage,” 90. 64. Masson, “Famille et héritage,” 90. 65. Nathalie Blanpain, “Les hommes cadres vivent toujours six ans de plus que les ouvriers,” INSEE Première 1584 (2016). 66. Frémeaux, Les nouveaux héritiers, 35–37. 67. Masson, “Famille et héritage,” 91; Nicolas Herpin and Jean-­Hugues Dechaux, “Entraide familiale, indépendance économique et sociabilité,” Économie et Statistique 373 (2004): 3–32. 68. Zaloom, Indebted.



NOTES TO PAGES 29–32  279

69. Rémi Lenoir, Généalogie de la morale familiale (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 39; Rémi Lenoir, “The F ­ amily as a Social Institution: Strug­gles over Legitimate Repre­sen­ta­tions of Real­ity,” in Symbolic Power in Cultural Contexts, ed. J. Houtsonen and A. Antikainen (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008), 23–33. 70. For more on total income in­equality (­labor and capital) in dif­fer­ent periods and places, see Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, 249. 71. Garbinti, Goupille-­Lebret, and Piketty, “Accounting for Wealth In­equality,” 17. 72. Carmen Diana Deere and Cheryl Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap: What Do We Know and Why Does It M ­ atter?,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 1–50. 73. Carole Bonnet, Alice Keogh, and Benoît Rapoport, “Quels facteurs pour expliquer les ecarts de patrimoine entre hommes et femmes en France?,” Économie et Statistique 472–473 (2014): 101–123. 74. Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Inequalities and the Individualization of Wealth,” Journal of Public Economics 184 (2020): 104–145. 75. Nathalie Blanpain, “Le patrimoine des indépendants diminue fortement lors du passage à la retraite,” INSEE Première 739 (2000). 76. Camille Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche. Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients (Lormont: Le bord de l’eau, 2019), 74. 77. Markus Grabka, Jan Marcus, and Eva Sierminska, “Wealth Distribution within ­Couples,” Review of Economics of the House­hold 13 (2015): 459–486. 78. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century. 79. Sibylle Gollac, “La pierre de discorde, stratégies immobilières familiales dans la France contemporaine” (PhD diss., EHESS [School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences], Paris, November 2011), 603−605. 80. Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples. Enquête sur des affaires familiales (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013). 81. See the pioneering American study “Panel Study of Income Dynamics,” reported in Greg Duncan and Saul Hoffman, “A Reconsideration of the Economic Consequences of Marital Dissolution,” Demography 22, no. 4 (1985): 485–497; also see Richard Peterson, “A Re-­evaluation of the Eco­ nomic Consequences of Divorce,” American So­cio­log­i­cal Review 61, no. 3 (1996): 528–536. 82. For a comparison of Eu­ro­pean Union member-­states conducted as a part of the Eu­ro­pean Community House­hold Panel (ECHP) between 1994 and 2000, see Wilfred Uunk, “The Economic Consequences of Divorce for W ­ omen in the Eu­ro­pean Union: The Impact of Welfare State Arrangements,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Population 20 (2004): 251–284. 83. Yves Jauneau and Émilie Raynaud, “Des disparités importantes d’evolutions de niveau de vie,” in Les revenus et le patrimoine des ménages: Édition 2009 (Paris: INSEE, 2009), 36, https://­w ww​.­insee​.­fr​/­fr​/­statistiques​/­1374540​?­sommaire​ =­1374541; this analy­sis is based on the French data from the Eu­ro­pean Union–­level instrument EU-­SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions).

280   NOTES TO PAGES 32–35

84. Carole Bonnet, Bertrand Garbinti, and Anne Solaz, “Gender In­equality a­ fter Divorce: The Flip Side of Marital Specialization—­Evidence from a French Administrative Database,” INSEE Working Papers, 2016. The study was of the tax declarations of 56,000 men and 64,000 w ­ omen: t­ hese documents lacked information on social security benefits, which had to be reconstructed for each ­house­hold. 85. Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James, “The Power of ­Women and the Subversion of Community” (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1975). 86. Christine Delphy, “The Main E ­ nemy,” Feminist Issues 1 (1980): 23–40. 87. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: House­work, Reproduction, and Feminist Strug­gle (Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions / PM Press, 2012). 88. Ann Oakley, The Sociology of House­work (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, [1974] 1985). 89. Silvia Federici, Wages against House­work (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1975). 90. Leonore J. Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for ­Women and ­Children in Amer­i­ca (London: ­Free Press, 1985); Carol Smart, The Ties That Bind: Law, Marriage and the Reproduction of Patriarchal Relations (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, [1984] 2012); Martha Fineman, The Illusion of Equality: The Rhe­toric and Real­ity of Divorce Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 91. Monique Wittig, “The Straight Mind,” Feminist Issues 1, no. 1 (1980): 103–111. 92. Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Socie­ties (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992); Anthony Giddens, “­Family,” in Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping Our Lives (New York: Routledge, [1999] 2000); Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-­Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love (Cambridge: Polity Press, [1990] 1995). 93. François de Singly, Séparée. Vivre l’expérience de la rupture (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011). 94. Beverly Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge, 2004), 54. 95. Maurice Godelier, Horizon, trajets marxistes en anthropologie (Paris: Maspero, 1973), 18. 96. Claude Meillassoux, Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1975] 1981). 97. Gary Becker, A Treatise on the F ­ amily (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [1981] 1991); Theodore C. Bergstrom, “A Survey of Theories of the ­Family,” in Handbook of Population and ­Family Economics, ed. Mark Rosensweig and Oded Stark (Amsterdam: North-­Holland, 1997), 21–79. 98. Julien Ténédos and Florence Weber, L’Économie domestique. Entretien avec Florence Weber (La Courneuve: Aux Lieux d’être, 2006), 19. 99. Florence Weber, Penser la parenté aujourd’ hui. La force du quotidien (Paris: Les Éditions rue d’Ulm, 2013); Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, “Is Social Network Analy­sis Useful for Studying the F ­ amily Economy?,” Economic Sociology: The Eu­ro­pean Electronic Newsletter 19, no. 3 (2018): 4–10.



NOTES TO PAGES 35–39  281

100. Viviana Zelizer, “Transactions intimes,” Genèses 42 (2001): 125. 101. Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy. 102. Robert O. Blood and Donald M. Wolfe, Husbands and Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living (New York: F ­ ree Press, 1960); Gerald W. McDonald, “­Family Power: The Assessment of a De­cade of Theory and Research, 1970–1979,” Journal of Marriage and the F ­ amily 42, no. 4 (1980): 841–854. 103. Jan Pahl, “The Allocation of Money and the Structuring of In­equality within Marriage,” So­cio­log­i­cal Review 31, no 2 (1983): 237–262; Carolyn Vogler and Jan Pahl, “Money, Power and In­equality within Marriage,” So­cio­log­i­cal Review 42, no. 2 (1994): 263–288. 104. Vogler and Pahl, “Money, Power and In­equality within Marriage”; Fran Bennett, Jerome De Henau, and Sirin Sung, “Within-­Household Inequalities across Classes? Management and Control of Money,” in Gender Inequalities in the 21st ­Century: New Barriers and Continuing Constraints, ed. Jacqueline Scott, Rosemary Crompton, and Clare Lyonette (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2010); Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor ­Women Put Motherhood before Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, [2005] 2011). 105. Catherine T. Kenney, “­Father ­Doesn’t Know Best? Parents’ Control of Money and ­Children’s Food Insecurity,” Journal of Marriage and F ­ amily 70, no. 3 (2008): 654–669. 106. Muhammad Yunus with Alan Jolis, Banker to the Poor: The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 107. Supriya Garikipati, Susan Johnson, Isabelle Guérin, and Ariane Szafarz, “Microfinance and Gender: Issues, Challenges and the Road Ahead,” Journal of Development Studies 53, no. 5 (2017): 641–648. 108. Sandra Collavechia, “Moneywork: Caregiving and the Management of ­Family Finances,” in ­Family Patterns, Gender Relations, ed. Bonnie J. Fox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 417–427. 109. Gail Wilson, Money in the ­Family: Financial Organisation and ­Women’s Responsibility, (Aldershot, UK: Averbury Gower, 1987); Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anx­i­eties of Affluence (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2017). 110. For a cross-­national comparison, see Beyda Çineli, “Who Manages the Money at Home? Multilevel Analy­sis of ­Couples’ Money Management across 34 Countries,” Gender and Society 36, no. 1 (2022): 32–62. 111. Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture.

2. F ­ amily Reproduction versus ­Women’s Wealth 1. “Johnny Hallyday’s ­Children Contest Exclusion from His ­Will,” BBC, February 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­bbc​.­com​/­news​/­world​-­europe​-­43032314.

282   NOTES TO PAGES 40–45

2. For the full text, see D. N., 2018, “ ‘Pas une guitare, pas une moto . . .’: Ce que dit le communiqué de Laura Smet,” BFMTV, February 12, 2018, https://­w ww​ .­bfmtv​.­com​/­police​-­justice​/­pas​-­une​-­guitare​-­pas​-­une​-­moto​-­ce​-­que​-­dit​-­le​-­com​ munique​-­de​-­laura​-­smet​_ ­AV​-­201802120018​.­html. 3. N = 312. Europresse database, l­imited to France using the keywords “Hally­day” and “héritage” (inheritance), February 12–18, 2018, http://­w ww​.­europresse​ .­com​/­en​/­. 4. Pierre Lamaison, “La diversité des modes de transmission: Une géographie tenace,” Études Rurales no. 110–112 (1988): 119–175; Georges Augustins, Comment se perpétuer? Devenir des lignées et destins des patrimoines dans les paysanneries européennes (Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie, 1989). 5. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in Amer­i­ca (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, [1840] 2002), vol. 2, bk. 3, chap. 8, “Influence of Democracy on Kindred.” 6. Anne Gotman, Hériter (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 6. 7. “David Hallyday, Le digne héritier,” Proximus, November 27, 2018, https://­​ www​.­proximus​.­be​/­pickx​/­fr​/­1906417​/­david​-­hallyday​-­le​-­digne​-­heritier. 8. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-­Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, [1970] 1977). 9. Pierre Bourdieu, “Marriage Strategies as Strategies of Social Reproduction,” originally published in 1972, reprinted in The Bachelors’ Ball: The Crisis of Peasant Society in Béarn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [2003] 2008); Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1972] 1977). 10. Only Micheline, who left school at 17, moved away: b­ ecause she started earning a wage early, she was able to support the bakery during hard times, but she took her distance from the ­family. Micheline ­didn’t want to owe them anything but also ­didn’t want to burn any bridges, b­ ecause her ­mother regularly took care of her ­c hildren and helped them with their summer homework. Micheline became closer to her ­family again when she started having serious health prob­lems. Her position in the ­family strategy of social reproduction is reminiscent of that of younger immigrant ­children in the nineteenth c­ entury (Noël Bonneuil, Arnaud Bringé, and Paul-­A ndré Rosental, “Familial Components of First Migrations ­a fter Marriage in Nineteenth-­Century France,” Social History 33, no. 1 [2008]: 36–59). 11. François Héran, Le bourgeois de Séville. Terre et parenté en Andalousie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 76. 12. INSEE, Enquête Patrimone (French Wealth Survey), 2003–2004, http://­w ww​ .­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/ ­X ML​/­lil​-­0250b​.­x ml. 13. Céline Bessière, “Female and Male Domestic Partners in Wine-­Grape Farms (Cognac, France): Conjugal Asymmetry and Gender Discrimination in F ­ amily Businesses,” The History of the ­Family 19, no. 3 (2014): 341–357; Sylvia



NOTES TO PAGES 45–53  283

Yanagisako, Producing Culture and Capital: ­Family Firms in Italy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2003). 14. Bernard Zarca, “L’Héritage de l’indépendance professionnelle selon les lignées, le sexe et le rang dans la fratrie,” Population 8, no. 2 (1993): 284. 15. Sibylle Gollac, “Travail indépendant et transmissions patrimoniales: Le poids des inégalités au sein des fratries,” Economie et Statistique 417–418 (2008): 66. 16. Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski, and Monique de Saint-­Martin, “Les stratégies de reconversion. Les classes sociales et le système d’enseignement,” Social Sciences Information 12, no. 5 (1973): 61–113. 17. Salic Law was a ­legal system developed by the Salian Franks in the fourth through sixth centuries. In the f­ ourteenth ­century, jurists working for the Capetian royal ­family dug up an article of Salic Law to justify a ban on ­women ascending to the throne of France. Throughout early modern and pre-­ Revolutionary French history, the term “Salic Law” thus came to designate the rules of ascension to the throne of France. 18. Lise Bernard, “Réflexions sur la ‘pe­tite bourgeoisie nouvelle’ dans les années 2000,” in Trente ans après “La Distinction” de Pierre Bourdieu, ed. Philippe Coulangeon and Julien Duval (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 266–277; Lise Bernard, La précarité en col blanc. Une enquête sur les agents immobiliers (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2017). 19. Bourdieu, “Marriage Strategies.” 20. Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 1. 21. Annette Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-­while-­Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 22. In En­glish, “patrimony” has largely lost the meaning of an inheritance from a specific f­ ather in ­favor of a more general cultural conception of heritage, and “patronym” more specifically designates a type of f­ amily name that includes the f­ ather’s name, such as Johnson. 23. Vanessa Bellamy, “En 2014, 818 565 bébés sont nés en France. Un nouveau-­né sur dix porte le nom de ses deux parents,” INSEE Focus 33 (2015). 24. Marie-­France Valetas, “La subordination patronymique de la femme,” Travail, Genre et Sociétés 7 (2002): 180–184. 25. Wilfried Rault, “Garder l’usage de son nom et le transmettre. Pratiques de la Loi Française de 2002 sur le double nom,” Clio, Femmes, Genre et Histoire 45 (2017): 129–149. 26. ­L egal scholars have discussed how egalitarian the US ­legal framework may or may not be: Elizabeth F. Emens, “Changing Name Changing: Framing Rules and the F ­ uture of Marital Names,” University of Chicago Law Review 74, no. 3 (2007): article 1. The area of gender studies has addressed opinions and practices concerning the choice of surname upon marriage and for c­ hildren, but the topic has received even more attention in social psy­chol­ogy and

284   NOTES TO PAGES 55–63

evolutionary psy­chol­ogy: Laura Hamilton, Claudia Geist, and Brian Powell, “Marital Name Change as a Win­dow into Gender Attitudes,” Gender & Society 25, no. 2 (2011): 145–175; David R. Johnson and Laurie K. Scheuble, “What Should We Call Our Kids? Choosing C ­ hildren’s Surnames when Parents’ Last Names Differ,” Social Science Journal 39, no. 3 (2002): 419–429; Melanie MacEacheron, “North American ­Women’s Marital Surname Change: Practices, Law, and Patrilineal Descent Reckoning,” Evolutionary Psychological Science 2 (2016): 149–161. All of the data used in this body of research confirms the existence of a gap between a formally neutral l­egal framework and de facto patrilineal practices in the United States and Canada. 27. Giuliana Giuliani, “Who Is Older? Gender and Age Differences in Heterosexual ­Couples” (PhD diss., Eu­ro­pean University Institute, 2020). 28. Fabienne Daguet, “De plus en plus de c­ ouples dans lesquels l’homme est plus jeune que la femme,” INSEE Première 1613 (2016). 29. Nancy Folbre and Kristin Smith, “The Wages of Care: Bargaining Power, Earnings and In­equality,” Working Paper Series no. 430, Po­liti­cal Economy Research Institute, University of Mas­sa­chu­setts, Amherst, 2017, https://­peri​ .­umass​.­edu​/­economists​/­nancy​-­folbre​/­item​/­962​-­the​-­wages​-­of​-­care​-­bargaining​ -­power​-­earnings​-­a nd​-­inequality. 30. Caitlyn Collins, Making Motherhood Work: How ­Women Manage ­Careers and Caregiving (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019), 15–22. 31. David Cotter, Joan Hermsen, Seth Ovadia, and Reeve Vannemen, “The Glass Ceiling Effect,” Social Forces 80, no. 2 (2001): 655–682. 32. Susan Milner, Sophie Pochic, Alexandra Scheele, and Sue Williamson, eds., “Gender Pay Gaps,” special issue, Gender, Work and Organ­ization 26, no. 5 (2019). 33. Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz, and Maria Stanfors, “The G ­ reat Convergence? Gender and Unpaid Work in Eu­rope and the United States,” Lund Papers in Economic Demography 1 (2020), https://­w ww​.­ed​.­lu​.­se​/­media​/­ed​/­papers​/­working​ _­papers​/­LPED​_ ­2020​_­1​.­pdf. 34. Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz, and Maria-­L etizia Tanturri, “The Time Cost of Raising C ­ hildren in Dif­fer­ent Fertility Contexts: Evidence from France and Italy,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Population 35, no. 2 (2019): 223–261. 35. Thomas Morin, “Écarts de revenus au sein des ­couples. Trois femmes sur quatre gagnent moins que leur conjoint,” INSEE Première 1492 (2014). 36. Céline Bessière, De Génération en génération. Arrangements de famille dans les entreprises viticoles de Cognac (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2010), 33ff. 37. The ­couple believed the bank would not grant them a loan sizable enough to buy the h ­ ouse. Banks often require that both members of a ­couple co-­sign the mortgage, thus demanding that each borrower demonstrate an income that is reliable and high enough to cover the loan. See Jeanne Lazarus and Laure Lacan, “­Toward a Relational Sociology of Credit: An Exploration of the French Lit­er­a­ture,” Socio-­Economic Review 18, no. 2 (2020): 575–597.



NOTES TO PAGES 64–68  285

38. Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Inequalities and the Individualization of Wealth,” Journal of Public Economics 184 (2020): 104–145. 39. A decline in the rate of marriage and an increase in the divorce rate has been observed in most Eu­ro­pean countries since the 1970s (Eurostat data, 1964– 2019, https://­ec​.­europa​.­eu​/­eurostat​/­statistics​-­explained​/­index​.­php​?­title​ =­Marriage​_­a nd​_­divorce​_­statistics#Fewer​_­marriages​.­2C ​_­more​_­divorces). Both of ­these rates have held steady since 2010, although the pace of change varies from country to country. In the United States, the divorce rate is currently in decline, but at a slower pace than the marriage rate (National Center for Health Statistics, 2000–2019, https://­w ww​.­cdc​.­gov​/­nchs​/­nvss​ /­marriage​-­divorce​.­htm). This means that the likelihood of divorce is not declining for American c­ ouples who decide to marry, whose chances of staying together are close to t­ hose of French ­couples, where one of two marriages ends in divorce. 40. The marriage rate in France is 3.5 marriages per 1,000 (2018 data), which is especially low relative to other countries in Eu­rope (4.5 marriages per 1,000) and the United States (6.5 marriages per 1,000), although, as explained e­ arlier, the rate is declining across ­these regions. 41. The portion of married ­couples in France who sign a marriage contract specifying the separation of assets went from 6.1 ­percent of ­couples in 1992 to 10 ­percent in 2010. Among c­ ouples who had been together for fewer than six years in 2010, 15 ­percent opted for this type of contract. See Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Prenuptial Agreements and Matrimonial Property Regimes in France (1855–2010),” Explorations in Economic History 68 (2018): 132–142. 42. Frémeaux and Leturcq, “Prenuptial Agreements.” 43. Sébastien Durier, “Après une rupture d’­union, l’homme reste plus souvent dans le logement conjugal,” INSEE Focus 91 (2017). 44. Giulia Ferrari, Carole Bonnet, and Anne Solaz, “ ‘­Will the One Who Keeps the ­Children Keep the House?’ Residential Mobility ­a fter Divorce by Parenthood Status and Custody Arrangements in France,” Demographic Research 40 (2019): 359–394. 45. For an explanation of the nomenclature, see Statistical Appendix D. 46. This according to United Nations data: https://­population​.­un​.­org​/­w pp​/­Down​ load​/­Standard​/­Mortality​/­. 47. Thomas Deroyon, “En 2018, l’espérance de vie sans incapacité est de 64,5 ans pour les femmes et de 63,4 ans pour les hommes,” Études et Résultats 1127 (2019). 48. Source study: DREES (French Ministry of Health and Solidarity), 2018. Franck Arnaud and Gwennaël Solard, “Les Retraités et Les Retraites,” Pa­norama de la DREES, 2018, https://­drees​.­solidarites​-­sante​.­gouv​.­fr​/­publica​ tions​/­panoramas​-­de​-­la​-­drees​/­les​-­retraites​-­et​-­les​-­retraites​-­edition​-­2018.

286   NOTES TO PAGES 68–74

A pension with surviving spouse benefits provides part of a deceased person’s pension to his or her surviving spouse, u ­ nder certain conditions. 49. Carole Bonnet and Jean-­Michel Hourriez, “Gender Equality in Pensions: What Role for Rights Accrued as a Spouse or a Parent?,” Population (En­glish edition) 67 (2012): 123–146. 50. This figure comes from the EPHA Study (Enquête EPHA), conducted by DREES (French Ministry of Health and Solidarity), 2015. Marianne Müller, “728 000 résidents en etablissements d’hébergement pour personnes agées en 2015. Premiers résultats de l’enquête EHPA 2015,” Études et résultats 1015 (2017). 51. Solène Billaud, “Partager avant l’héritage, financer l’hébergement en institution. Enjeux économiques et mobilisations familiales autour de personnes agées des classes populaires” (PhD diss., EHESS, 2010), 105–108.

3. Acquit the Strong and Condemn the Weak 1. Mainland France is divided into twelve administrative regions, which are further split into ninety-­six administrative departments, each run by a General Council of elected officials and an administration of civil servants. 2. ­L egal aid is financial or ­legal assistance that the state provides to p ­ eople in need of ­legal counsel but who lack the resources to pay for it. It covers part or all of the costs of procedures, expertise, and ­legal fees, which it pays directly. 3. Nicolas Herpin and Jean-­Hugues Déchaux, “Entraide familiale, indépendance economique et sociabilité,” Economie et Statistique 373 (2004): 2–32. In the working classes, widowed or divorced w ­ omen usually h ­ ouse their ­children, when their housing situation allows it. They are also more likely to take care of their aged parents. 4. Emilia Schijman, À qui appartient le droit? Ethnographier une économie de pauvreté (Paris: LGDJ, 2019). 5. Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2005); Florence Weber, Penser la parenté aujourd’ hui. La force du quotidien (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2013). 6. Nicolas Herpin, L’Application de la loi. Deux poids, deux mesures (Paris: Seuil, 1977); Marc Galanter, “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of L ­ egal Change,” Law and Society Review 9, no. 1 (1974): 95–160; Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, “Les animaux malades de la peste,” accessed June 17, 2022, https://­gallica​.­bnf​.­fr​/­essentiels​/­fontaine​/­fables​/­a nimaux​-­malades​ -­peste (translation is our own). 7. William Felstiner, Richard Abel, and Austin Sarat, “The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming,” Law and Society Review 15, no. 3–4 (1981): 631–654; Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).



NOTES TO PAGES 74–80  287

8. For a critique, see Laura B. Nielsen, “Situating ­L egal Consciousness: Experiences and Attitudes of Ordinary Citizens about Law and Street Harassment,” Law and Society Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 1055–1090; Lorenzo Barrault-­Stella and Alexis Spire, “Introduction,” in “Quand les classes supérieures s’arrangent avec le droit,” ed. Lorenzo Barrault-­Stella and Alexis Spire, special issue, Sociétés Contemporaines 108 (2017): 5–14. 9. This definition of notaire is from French Ordonnance no. 45-2590, de 2 novembre 1945, article 1. 10. Ezra N. Suleiman, Private Power and Centralization in France: The Notaires and the State (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, [1987] 1989). 11. Lucien Karpik, Les avocats. Entre l’ état, le public et le marché, XIIIe–­X Xe siècles (Paris: Gallimard, 1995); Christian Bessy, L’Organisation des activités des avocats, entre monopole et marché (Paris: LGDJ, 2015). 12. Calculated as follows: Notaires register about 300,000 declarations of succession per year, for about 500,000 deaths. 13. According to INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2014–2015, http://­w ww​.­progedo​-­adisp​.­fr​/­enquetes​/­X ML​/­lil​.­php​?­lil​=l­il​-­1150, the “person of reference” was a man in 78 ­percent of ­couples that had been married fewer than ten years. For a definition of the “person of reference,” see Statistical Appendix E. We use ­here the six socioprofessional categories of the French national statistical agency to break down the employment structure (see Statistical Appendix D for a full description). The category “cadre” does not have an exact equivalent in British or American usage, so we prefer to leave it in French for accuracy. Cadres are white-­collar employees with specialized skills in administrative, decision-­making, and / or managerial positions in businesses, organ­izations, and the civil ser­vice, enjoying the benefits and security that come with such positions. For a detailed exploration of this socioprofessional group, see Luc Boltanski, The Making of a Class: Cadres in French Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). In the nomenclature, cadres are grouped with higher intellectual professions—­k nowledge workers such as ­lawyers, medical doctors, architects, journalists, artists, and academics—­because both groups presume advanced studies. 14. Annie Fouquet, “Les femmes chefs d’entreprise: Le cas français,” Travail, Genre et Sociétés 13 (2005): 31–50; Annie Fouquet, Jacqueline Laufer, and Sylvie Schweitzer, “Les femmes chefs d’entreprise: La parité pour demain?,” in Dictionnaire Historique des Patrons Français, ed. Jean-­Claude Daumas (Paris: Flammarion, 2010), 816ff. 15. Sébastien Ruz, “Pour une sociologie des sociétés civiles immobilières: Logiques patrimoniales, familiales et professionnelles, identités sociojuridiques: Le cas de la région lyonnaise (1978–1998)” (PhD diss., Université Lumière-­Lyon 2, 2005). 16. Camille Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche. Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients (Lormont: Le Bord de l’Eau, 2019), 69–88. See also Statistical Appendix A.

288   NOTES TO PAGES 80–89

17. Roughly three-­quarters of ­family court judges in France are ­women. The feminization of the judiciary has been rapid and decisive: since the early 2000s, ­women have come to account for more than half of judges (66 ­percent in 2017), a position that has been open to them only since 1946; only 6 ­percent of judges w ­ ere w ­ omen 1959. This situation is in marked contrast with countries operating ­under common law, where only a minority of judges are w ­ omen: they represent a ­little over a quarter of all state and federal judges in the United States (Center for ­Women in Government and Civil Society, 2011), 32 ­percent of district and 17 ­percent of high court judges in the United Kingdom (Judicial Database, 2012–2013), and around one-­third of federal and provincial judges in Canada (Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, 2012). See Céline Bessière and Muriel Mille, “The Judge Is often a ­Woman: Professional Perceptions and Practices of Male and Female F ­ amily Court Judges in France,” Sociologie du Travail 56 (2014): e43–­e68. 18. Calculated as follows: In 2010, French notaires registered 320,000 declarations of succession, but only 16,836 w ­ ere taken to court. Only 4,753 divorced c­ ouples went to court to ­settle a dispute over the liquidation of marital property, which is less than 3 ­percent of the 175,261 filings for divorce that year. 19. France Info, “Héritage de Johnny Hallyday: La décision du tribunal ‘va quasiment les forcer à s’asseoir à la ­table des négotiations,’ ” April 13, 2018, https://­w ww​.­francetvinfo​.­fr​/­culture​/­musique​/­johnny​-­hallyday​/­heritage​-­de​ -­johnny​-­hallyday​-­la​-­decision​-­du​-­tribunal​-­va​-­quasiment​-­les​-­forcer​-­a​-­s​-­a sseoir​-­a​ -­la​-­table​-­des​-­negociations​_ ­2704732​.­html. 20. Éric Bureau and Emmanuel Marolle, “Héritage Hallyday, le temps de l’apaisement,” Le Parisien / Aujourd’ hui en France, October 16, 2019, 18. 21. Robert H. Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser, “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce,” Yale Law Journal 88, no. 5 (1979): 950–997. 22. Corinne Delmas, Les notaires en France. Des officiers de l’authentique entre héritage et modernité (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019). 23. According to the “Rapport sur les professions réglementées de l’Inspection générale des finances” (Report on the regulated professions of the General Inspection of Finance), no. 2012 M05703, Ministry of the Economy and Finance, March 2013, vol. 1, the cost of a notarial practice amounts to 2.2 years of profit (p. 52); the average price for a newcomer in 2011 (­either the cost of an entire individual office or the pro-­rated cost of a share in a firm) was 652,831 euros (p. 37). 24. Suleiman, Private Power and Centralization in France, 97. 25. George Marcus and Peter Hall, Lives in Trust: The Fortunes of Dynastic Families in Late Twentieth-­Century Amer­i­ca (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). 26. Autorité de la Concurrence, “Avis n° 18-­A-08 du 31 juillet 2018 relatif à la liberté d’installation des notaires et à une proposition de carte révisée des zones d’implantation, assortie de recommandations sur le rythme de création de



NOTES TO PAGES 90–97  289

nouveaux offices notariaux,” 62, https://­w ww​.­autoritedelaconcurrence​.­fr​/­sites​ /­default​/­files​/­commitments​/­18A08​.­pdf. 27. Corinne Delmas, “Le genre d’une profession à patrimoine,” Travail, Genre et Sociétés 41 (2019): 127–145. 28. Autorité de la Concurrence, “Avis n° 18-­A-08 du 31 juillet 2018,” 63. 29. Autorité de la Concurrence, “Avis n° 18-­A-08 du 31 juillet 2018,” 64. 30. Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, “Un entre-­soi de possédant·e·s. Le genre des arrangements patrimoniaux dans les études notariales et cabinets d’avocat·e·s,” Sociétés contemporaines 108 (2017): 69–95. 31. A 2011 Conseil National des Barreaux (National Bar Council) survey of 205 law firms of all specialties in France shows the average fees in the range of 163–247 euros an hour. The fees of the 82 firms specializing in ­family law ­were significantly lower, at 144–209 euros / hour. Bessy, L’Organisation des activités des avocats, 101. 32. Défenseur des Droits, “Conditions de travail et expériences des discriminations dans la profession d’avocate en France,” 2018, https://­defenseurdesdroits​.­fr​/­sites​ /­default​/­files​/­atoms​/­files​/­rapp​-­enq​-­avocats​-­a4​-­num​-­02​.­05​.­2018​.­pdf. 33. The “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (see methodological annex), 758 contested divorce cases. For information about this database, see Statistical Appendix H. 34. In cases where the client’s occupation is unknown (N = 5), appointments w ­ ere shorter on average (31 minutes). 35. An income of 4,000 euros a month puts him in the first decile of the distribution of incomes in France, 36. Brooke Harrington, Capital without Borders: Wealth Man­ag­ers and the One ­Percent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche. 37. Gilles Laferté, L’Embourgeoisement: Une enquête chez les céréaliers (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2018). 38. Philip Milburn, “L’Honoraire de l’avocat au pénal: Une économie de la relation professionnelle,” Droit et Société 26 (1994): 175–195. 39. At the time of research, ­legal aid paid 685 euros (excluding taxes) for an uncontested divorce, and 776.56 euros (excluding taxes) for a contested divorce, with the possibility of additional overage charges up to 365 euros (excluding taxes) for contingencies. 40. Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon-­Charlot, Grandes fortunes. Dynasties familiales et formes de richesse en France (Paris: Payot, 1996). 41. Olivier Schwartz, “Peut-on parler des classes populaires?,” La Vie des Idées, September 13, 2011, http://­w ww​.­laviedesidees​.­fr​/­Peut​-­onparler​-­ des​-­classes​.­html. 42. Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, “Des exploitations agricoles au travers de l’epreuve du divorce. Rapports sociaux de classe et de sexe dans l’agriculture,” Sociétés Contemporaines 96 (2014): 77–108. 43. Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, “Des usages sociaux différenciés d’un nouvel outil juridique: La mise en oeuvre des renonciations en matière

290   NOTES TO PAGES 98–107

successorale dans les offices notariaux,” in Renonciations et successions: Quelles pratiques?, ed. Cécile Péres (Issy-­les-­Moulineaux: Defrénois, 2017), 291–313. 44. The 2001 law extended ­these rights to all surviving spouses. 45. Céline Bessière, Émilie Biland, Abigail Bourguignon, Sibylle Gollac, Muriel Mille, and Hélène Steinmetz, “ ‘Faut s’adapter aux cultures, Maître!’ La racialisation des publics de la justice familiale en France métropolitaine,” Ethnologie Française 169 (2018): 131–140. 46. Source: “4000 ­Family Cases Database,” 4,450 parties to proceedings having a ­lawyer involved in divorce and nondivorce cases archived in 2013.

4. Sexist Accounting ­under Cover of Egalitarian Law 1. This and following translations of the current French Civil Code come from David Gruning, Alain R. Levasseur, John Randy Trahan, and Estelle Roy, “Traduction du Code Civil Français en Anglais, version bilingue,” 2015. Note that this translation obscures the exclusive use of masculine forms of words referring to ­people—in this quote, for example, descendants (male descendants) but not descendantes (female descendants). 2. The access of ­women to inheritance rights equal to t­ hose of men is currently being debated in several countries that follow the Islamic l­egal tradition (most prominently Tunisia and Morocco) and in countries where po­liti­cal groups argue for a family-­law system that takes individuals’ religion into account, as is the case in Senegal: Marième N’Diaye, La réforme du droit de la famille. Une comparaison Sénégal-­Maroc (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2016); see also Feriel Lalami, Les Algériennes contre le code de la famille (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2012). 3. Pierre Lamaison, “La diversité des modes de transmission: Une géographie tenace,” Études Rurales 110–112 (1988): 119–175; Hervé Le Bras and Emmanuel Todd, L’Invention de la France. Atlas anthropologique et politique (Paris: Gallimard, [1981] 2012). 4. Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married ­Women’s Property Law in Nineteenth-­Century ­England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983). 5. Carole Shammas, “Re-­a ssessing the Married W ­ omen’s Property Acts,” Journal of ­Women’s History 6, no. 1 (1994): 9–28. 6. Jean-­L ouis Halpérin, “Le droit privé de la Révolution: Héritage législatif et héritage idéologique,” Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française 328 (2002): 135–151; Halpérin, Histoire du droit privé français depuis 1804 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012). 7. The more equitable status of ­women ­under the French Civil Code at the time can be seen by comparing with American states operating u ­ nder each system over the ­century; see Carole Shammas, Marylynn Salmon, and Michel Dahlin, Inheritance in Amer­i­ca, from Colonial Time to the Pre­sent (New Brunswick, NJ:

















NOTES TO PAGES 108–116  291

Rutgers University Press, 1987), 84. Even ­today, the wealth gap between men and ­women is smaller in countries that offer community property, w ­ hether it be partial or total, relative to countries where the separation of property is the norm; see Carmen D. Deere and Cheryl R. Doss, “The Gender Asset Gap: What Do We Know and Why Does It M ­ atter?,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 1–50. 8. “Donations and legacies made to the son of one who is called to the succession when the succession is opened are always reputed to have been made with a dispensation of collation. A ­father coming to the succession of the donor is not bound to collate” (Article 847 of the Civil Code, still in force); “Likewise, a son coming in his own right to the succession of the donor is not bound to collate a donation made to his own ­father, even if he has accepted his ­father’s succession; but if the son comes to the succession only by repre­sen­ta­tion, he must collate what was given to his ­father, even if he has repudiated his ­father’s succession” (Article 848 of the Civil Code, still in force). Stéphanie Hennette-­ Vauchez, Marc Pichard, and Diane Roman, eds., La loi et le genre. Études critiques de droit français (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2014), 315ff. 9. We take an American legal-­sociological approach ­here, especially that of Jon B. Gould and Scott Barclay, “Mind the Gap: The Place of Gap Studies in Sociolegal Scholarship,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8 (2012): 323–335; Lauren Edelman, Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 10. Céline Bessière, “Reversed Accounting: ­L egal Professionals, Families and the Gender Wealth Gap in France,” Socio-­Economic Review 20, no. 1 (2022): 233–256. 11. “The descendants of a farmer who, of an age over 18 years, directly and effectively contribute to the farm, without being associated with the profits or losses and who receive no wages in exchange for their help, are legally reckoned to be the beneficiaries of a ­labor contract with deferred wages, without ­these wages being included in the determination of shares in the succession leading to the payment of a balancing payment to be borne by the co-­heirs” (French Rural Code, Article L. 321-13-­L . 321-21; our translation). 12. Sibylle Gollac, “La pierre de discorde, stratégies immobilières familiales dans la France contemporaine” (PhD diss., EHESS [School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences], Paris, November 2011, 601−603; Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre, Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Polity Press, [2017] 2020), 86–89. 13. This translation comes from The Code Napoleon; or, The French Civil Code, trans. “a barrister of the inner ­temple” (London: William Benning, Law Bookseller, 1827). 14. Statistical studies in many countries have demonstrated the advantage men have in the inheritance of professional assets. For France, see Sibylle Gollac, “Travail indépendant et transmissions patrimoniales: Le poids des inégalités au

292   NOTES TO PAGES 116–121

sein des fratries,” Economie et Statistique 417–418 (2008): 55–75; and Luc Arrondel and Anne Lafferère, “Les partages inégaux de successions entre frères et soeurs,” Économie et Statistique 256 (1992): 29–42. For the United States, see Andrew Burke, Felix FitzRoy, and Michael Nolan, “What Makes a Die-­Hard Entrepreneur? Beyond the ‘Employee or Entrepreneur’ Dichotomy,” Small Business Economics 31 (2008): 93–115. For Australia, see Siobhan Austen, Therese Jefferson, and Rachel Ong, “The Gender Gap in Financial Security: What We Know and ­Don’t Know about Australian House­holds,” Feminist Economics 3 (2014): 25–52. 15. Céline Bessière, De génération en generation. Arrangements de famille dans les entreprises viticoles de Cognac (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2010), 183ff.; see also Céline Bessière, “Female and Male Domestic Partners in Wine-­Grape Farms (Cognac, France): Conjugal Asymmetry and Gender Discrimination in F ­ amily Businesses,” The History of the ­Family 19, no. 3 (2014): 341–357. 16. House­holds in which the person of reference is a retired farmer or owner of a small business (tradesperson, shop­keeper, head of a com­pany) are more likely, all other t­ hings being equal (age, wealth, income, educational attainments, number of c­ hildren), to have transferred part of their assets as gifts while they ­were still living, according to the findings of INSEE, Enquête Patrimoine (French Wealth Survey), 2009–2010, https://­w ww​.­insee​.­fr​/­fr​/­metadonnees​ /­source​/­operation​/­s1363​/­presentation; Bertrand Garbinti, Pierre Lamarche, and Laurianne Salembier, “Héritages, donations et aides aux ascendants et descendants,” INSEE Références (2012), https://­w ww​.­insee​.­fr​/­fr​/­statistiques​ /­1373963​?­sommaire​=­1373966. 17. Notaires de France, “Transmission: Reprise et cession d’une entreprise,” January 13, 2021, https://­w ww​.­notaires​.­fr​/­fr​/­entreprise​/­transmission​-­reprise​/­la​ -­transmission​-­d ’une​-­entreprise. 18. Notaires de France, “Héritage: Amenager la reserve héréditaire avec le pacte de famille,” April 12, 2019, https://­w ww​.­notaires​.­fr​/­fr​/­donation​-­succession​ /­donation​/­a ménager​-­la​-­réserve​-­héréditaire​-­le​-­pacte​-­de​-­famille; “Inheritance: Donation-­partage and donation transgénérationnelle,” April 23, 2019, https://­w ww​.­notaires​.­fr​/­fr​/­donation​-­succession​/­donation​/­succession​-­donation​ -­partage​-­et​-­donation​-­transgénérationnelle. 19. Notaires de France, “La société civile immobilière familiale (SCI),” April 29, 2021, https://­w ww​.­notaires​.­fr​/­fr​/­immobilier​-­fiscalité​/­fiscalité​-­et​-­gestion​-­du​ -­patrimoine​/­la​-­société​-­civile​-­immobilière​-­familiale​-­sci. 20. Brochure, “La donation-­partage,” Les Mémos-­Conseils par des Notaires, Paris, 2004. 21. Groupe Monassier, Patrimoine et entreprise 61 (2015): 4. 22. Groupe Monassier, Patrimoine et entreprise 61 (2015): 4. 23. See especially Marion Galy-­R amounot, “Læticia Hallyday, la disgrâce d’une reine,” Madame Figaro, March 1, 2018. 24. Élise Karlin, “Du fric, des larmes et des images,” L’Express, February 21, 2018.



NOTES TO PAGES 121–128  293

25. Stéphanie Marteau, “La guerre de la Com’,” L’Express, March 28, 2018. 26. Pascale Robert-­Diard, “À l’audience sur la succession de Johnny Hallyday, l’affaire familiale devient cause patriotique,” Le Monde, March 31, 2018. 27. This according to Nicolas About (for the Commission of Laws), report no. 378, “Proposition de loi relative aux droits du conjoint survivant” (Bill relative to the rights of surviving spouses) (2000–2001), 11–12. 28. This proposal was made at the 100th Congress of the Notaires de France, May 16–19, 2004, “Civil Code. The Challenges of a New ­Century,” presided over by Sophie Chaine; commission four, “Liberty, Equality, Families,” presided over by Didier Coiffard, rapporteur Yves Delecraz, fourth proposal “La réserve conjugale.” 29. Didier Coiffard, “La réserve conjugale,” Droit et Patrimoine 125 (2004): 40–46. 30. Julie Minoc describes another way to manage the assets of ­these ­widows for their c­ hildren and ensure their preservation: to request placement in guardianship, which is granted to someone close to the person in question (usually one of their c­ hildren, for ­those over age 70) in nearly half of cases (Julie Minoc, “Psychiatrisation des décisions de protection judiciaire des majeurs et social blind,” paper presented at the JUSTINES seminar “Justice et inégalités au prisme des sciences sociales,” Cresppa-­CSU, Paris, June 17, 2019. 31. Alexandre Piquard, “Le divorce de Jeff Bezos crée de l’incertitude sur Amazon et son empire,” Le Monde, January 20, 2019. 32. Caroline Dewilde, “Divorce and the Housing Movements of Owner-­ Occupiers: A Eu­ro­pean Comparison,” Housing Studies 23, no. 6 (2008): 809–832. 33. Júlia Mikolai and Hill Kulu, “Short-­and Long-­Term Effects of Divorce and Separation on Housing Tenure in ­England and Wales,” Population Studies 72, no. 1 (2018): 17–39. 34. Sébastien Durier, “Après une rupture d’­union, l’homme reste plus souvent dans le logement,” INSEE Focus 91 (2017). 35. Giulia Ferrari, Carole Bonnet, and Anne Solaz, “ ‘­Will the One Who Keeps the ­Children Keep the House?’ Residential Mobility ­a fter Divorce by Parenthood Status and Custody Arrangements in France,” Demographic Research 40, no. 14 (2019): 376. 36. When married or unmarried parents legalize their separation, the children’s custody is assigned to the ­mother in 70 ­percent of cases; only 12 ­percent of cases end with physical custody being granted to the f­ ather, and 18 ­percent end in shared physical custody (Maud Guillonneau and Caroline Moreau, “La résidence des enfants de parents séparés: De la demande des parents à la décision du juge—­Exploitation des décisions définitives reçues par les juges aux affaires familiales au cours de la période comprise entre le 4 juin et le 15 juin 2012,” Ministry of Justice, Pôle d’Evaluation de la Justice Civile [Civil Justice Evaluation Division], 2013).

294   NOTES TO PAGES 130–148

37. This comes from an analy­sis of all rulings containing an order for the payment of a compensatory allowance made in trial courts (Tribunaux de grande instance) across France between September 16 and October 25, 2013. Zakia Belmokhtar and Julie Mansuy, “En 2013, neuf prestations compensatoires sur dix sous forme de capital,” Infostat Justice 144 (2016). 38. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press, [1980] 1990), 10.

5. Tax Avoidance and ­Family Peace at the Expense of W ­ omen 1. Extract from Raymond Dufournel’s ­will, dated February 15, 1991. 2. Sibylle Gollac, “Faire ses partages. Le règlement d’une succession et sa mise en récits dans un groupe de descendance,” Terrain 45 (2005): 113–124. 3. Pauline Grégoire-­Marchand, “La fiscalité des héritages: Connaissances et opinions des Français,” France Stratégie Document de Travail 2 (2018). 4. Jens Beckert, Inherited Wealth (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, [2004] 2008). 5. Jens Beckert, “Why Is the Estate Tax So Controversial?,” Society 45, no. 6 (2008): 521–528; Nicolas Frémeaux, Les nouveaux héritiers (Paris: Seuil, 2018), 60ff. 6. Nicolas Delalande and Alexis Spire, Histoire sociale de l’ impôt (Paris: La Découverte, 2010), 99. 7. Jonathan Goupille-­L ebret, “Combien ont coûté les réformes de l’impôt sur les successions mises en place en France depuis 2000,” Revue Economique 67, no. 4 (2016): 913–936. 8. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019). 9. Clément Dherbecourt, “Peut-on eviter une société d’héritiers?,” France Stratégie Note d’Analyse 51 (2017). 10. Jonathan Goupille-­Lebret and Jose Infante, “Behavioral Responses to Inheritance Tax: Evidence from Notches in France,” Journal of Public Economics 168 (2018): 21–34. Source: National Account Systems 2015. 11. Article 787 of the French Tax Code (Code Général des Impôts), since the Dutreil Law, August 6, 2003. 12. Alexis Spire, Résistances à l’ impôt, attachement à l’ état. Enquête sur les contribuables français (Paris: Seuil, 2018). 13. Notaires de France, “Le tarif du notaire: Emoluments et honoraires,” https:// www​.­notaires​.­fr​/­fr​/­profession​-­notaire​/­le​-­tarif​-­du​-­notaire​-­émoluments​-­et​ -­honoraires. 14. Spire, Résistances à l’Impôt, 117ff. 15. Brooke Harrington, Capital without Borders: Wealth Man­ag­ers and the One ­Percent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 16. Alexis Spire, “La domestication de l’impôt par les classes dominantes,” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 190 (2011): 58–71.



NOTES TO PAGES 151–158  295

17. Zakia Belmokhtar, “Une pension alimentaire fixée par les juges pour deux tiers des enfants de parents séparés,” Infostat Justice 128 (2014). Source: French Ministry of Justice, survey of a sample of 3,895 rulings delivered by French ­family courts in 2012. 18. Émilie Biland, Separated and Unequal: Families Encounter the Law in Quebec and France (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2022). 19. Justine Faure, interview with Stéphanie Lamy, “Comment en finir avec les pensions alimentaires non payées?,” LCI, February 25, 2019. 20. Camille Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche. Enquête sur les gestionnaires de fortune et leurs clients (Lormont: Le Bord de l’eau, 2019). 21. Herlin-­Giret, Rester riche. 22. Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, eds., Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Emmanuel Henry, Ignorance scientifique et inaction publique. Les politiques de santé au travail (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2017). 23. Nicholas Confessore, “How to Hide $400 Million,” New York Times Magazine, November 30, 2016. 24. Katryn Edin and Laura Lein, “Work, Welfare, and Single ­Mothers’ Economic Survival Strategies,” American So­cio­log­i­cal Review, 62 no. 2 (1997): 253–266; Florence Weber, Le travail au noir: Une fraude parfois vitale? (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2008). 25. Irène Théry, Le démariage. Justice et vie privée (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1993).

6. Can the Courts Make Up for Wealth In­equality? 1. Michael Lipsky, Street-­Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Ser­vices (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980); Émilie Biland and Hélène Steinmetz, “Are Judges Street-­L evel Bureaucrats? Evidence from French and Canadian ­Family Courts,” Law and Social Inquiry 42, no. 2 (2017): 298–324. 2. Biland and Steinmetz, “Are Judges Street-­L evel Bureaucrats?” 3. Yoan Demoli and Laurent Willemez, “Le poste et le lieu: Enjeux professionnels et familiaux de la mobilité chez les magistrats français,” Travail et Emploi 160, no. 4 (2019): 103–130. 4. The issue of the influence of the judge’s sex on decisions about child custody or alimony has become a media hobby­horse for ­fathers’ rights groups, which complain of ­women favoring w ­ omen in their application of the law. “­Women make gut decisions. . . . ​The hyperfeminization of the judicial professions is a real prob­lem! ­Women understand ­women. . . . ​Just like the ­women who want representatives of their own gender in politics, we ­fathers demand the same ­thing in the judiciary. A judge should be sexless, ­because he decides on ­people’s lives,” declared Fabrice Mejias, chairman of SOS Papa, France’s equivalent of Fathers-4-­Justice, in the August 31, 2004, edition of the French weekly news magazine Le Point. See Celine Bessière and Muriel Mille, “The Judge Is often a

296   NOTES TO PAGES 158–161













­ oman: Professional Perceptions and Practices of Male and Female ­Family W Court Judges in France,” Sociologie du Travail (En­glish supplement) 56 (2014): e43–­e68. For more on the rhe­toric of ­fathers’ rights organ­izations that associ­­­ates high rates of maternal custody with the feminization of the judiciary, see Aurélie Fillod-­Chabaud, “Les JAF sont-­ils anti-­papas?,” Délibérée 2 (2017): 92–95. 5. Nathalie Dandoy, Frédérique Granet, and Yann Favier, “Les logiques implicites de la prestation compensatoire dans le divorce: Approches comparées européennes,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 31, no. 2 (2016): 139–160. 6. This and all quotations of the French Civil Code come from the following English-­language version: https://­halshs​.­a rchives​-­ouvertes​.­fr​/­halshs​-­01385107​ /­document. Note that this translation obscures the exclusive use of masculine forms of words referring to ­people—­époux (male spouse) but never épouse (female spouse), for example. When pos­si­ble and appropriate we have reintro­­ duced gendered terms in En­glish (“his”) to bring the quotes closer to the original French version. 7. See, for example, Carole Bonnet, Jean-­Michel Hourriez and Roger Depledge, “The Treatment of C ­ ouples by the Pension System: Survivor’s Pensions and Pension Splitting,” Population (En­glish edition) 67, no. 1 (2012): 147–162. 8. Lucy ApRoberts, “Les pensions de réversion du régime général: Entre assurance retraite et assistance veuvage,” Retraite et Société 54 (2008): 93–119; Paul Hobeika, “Un patriarcat d’outre-­tombe: Veuvage, réversion et recomposition des rapports sociaux à l’âge de la retraite,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 41, no. 1 (2022): 48–65. 9. Hélène Belleau and Pascale Cornut-­St-­Pierre, “Conjugal Interdependence in Quebec: From L ­ egal Rules to Social Repre­sen­ta­tions on Spousal Support and Property Division at Breakup,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 29, no. 1 (2014): 43–58; Rosemary Auchmuty, “The Limits of Marriage Protection: In Defence of Property Law,” Oñati Sociolegal Series 6, no. 6 (2016): 1196–1224; Michelle Cottier and Johanna Muheim, “Travail de care non rémunéré et égalité de genre en droit de la famille suisse: Une évaluation critique du nouveau droit de l’entretien de l’enfant,” Revue de Droit Suisse 138 (2019): 61–88. A 2012 report from the prime minister’s Centre d’Analyse Stratégique (Center for Strategic Analy­sis) raised the possibility of extending compensation to unmarried c­ ouples with ­children, according to the logic of indemnity (“when parental l­abor induced a lower professional trajectory”), but ­there has been no follow-up to date. Marine Boisson and Vanessa Wisnia-­Weill, “Désunion et paternité,” Note d’Analyse 294 (2012): 15; Bruno Jeandidier, “Should ­There Be a System of Alimony for Unmarried C ­ ouples Who Separate?,” Population (En­glish edition) 71, no. 3 (2016): 494–497. 10. Anne Revillard, “Le droit de la famille: Outil d’une justice de genre? Les Défenseurs de la cause des femmes face au règlement juridique des con-



NOTES TO PAGES 162–168  297

séquences financières du divorce en France et au Québec (1975–2000),” L’Année Sociologique 59 (2009): 345–370; Anne Revillard, “Work / ­Family Policy in France: From State Familialism to State Feminism?,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the F ­ amily 2 (2006): 133–150. 11. Zakia Belmokhtar and Julie Mansuy, “En 2013, neuf prestations compensatoires sur dix sous forme de capital,” Infostat Justice 144 (2016): 4. This figure was as high as 97 ­percent in 2003 and 1994: see Ève Roumiguières, “Des prestations compensatoires sous forme de capital et non plus de rente,” Infostat Justice 77 (2004); Arnaud Régnier-­L oilier, “New Partner, New Living Arrangements? The Pro­cess of Repartnering ­a fter Separation,” Population (En­glish edition) 74, no. 1–2 (2019): 71–100. 12. Roumiguières, “Des prestations compensatoires.” 13. Belmokhtar and Mansuy, “En 2013, neuf prestations compensatoires.” 14. Quoted in Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples. Enquêtes sur des affaires familiales (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013), 236. 15. Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois, Bruno Jeandidier, and Julie Mansuy, “Les enjeux redistributifs de la prestation compensatoire: Une analyse statistique de 5000 décisions de divorce,” in Le traitement juridique des conséquences, ed. Isabelle Sayn and Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois (Brussels: Éditions Bruylant, 2018), 127–150. Of the 14,219 divorces decreed in trial courts in all of France between September 16 and October 25, 2013, the sample includes all decisions involving a request for a compensatory allowance (N = 3,224) and a randomly selected sample of 2,250 cases without a request for a compensatory allowance. 16. Belmokhtar and Mansuy, “En 2013, neuf prestations compensatoires.” Source: all decisions involving a request for a compensatory allowance (N = 3,200) between September 16 and October 25, 2013. 17. Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples, 51ff. 18. Isabelle Sayn, “Recourir à un barême pour fixer la prestation compensatoire? Portée et limite de l’outil,” in Sayn and Bourreau-­Dubois, Le traitement juridique des conséquences, 151–167. 19. Christine Delphy, “Continuities and Discontinuities in Marriage and Divorce,” in Sexual Divisions and Society: Pro­cess and Change, ed. Diana Leonard Barker and Sheila Allen (London: Routledge, [1976] 2020); Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, ­Women, Work and ­Family (London: Routledge, 1978); Sylvia Yanagisako, Producing Culture and Capital: ­Family Firms in Italy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2002). 20. In France, all public school teachers (primary through university) work for the national education system, making it pos­si­ble to transfer to another school or part of the country provided that ­there is an appropriate position available. 21. Ariane Pailhé and Anne Solaz, “Employment and Childbearing: W ­ omen Bear the Burden of the Work–­Family Balance,” Population and Socie­ties 426 (2006): 1–4.

298   NOTES TO PAGES 168–182

22. Dominique Anxo, Letizia Mencarini, Ariane Pailhé, Anne Solaz, Maria Letizia Tanturri, and Lennart Flood, “Gender Differences in Time Use over the Life Course in France, Italy, Sweden, and the US,” Feminist Economics 17, no. 3 (2011): 159–195. 23. Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples, 240. 24. Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois and Myriam Doriat-­Duban, “La couverture des coûts du divorce: Le Rôle de la famille, de l’état et du marché,” Population 71 (2016): 489–512; for a critique of this argument, see Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, “Le cache-­sexe de la théorie économique,” Population 71 (2016): 519–523. 25. This distinction between economic and cultural capital comes from Pierre Bourdieu’s book Distinction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). Our analy­sis was further nourished by Marianna N. Hansen and Maren Toft, “Wealth Accumulation and Opportunity Hoarding: Class-­Origin Wealth Gaps over a Quarter of a ­Century in a Scandinavian Country,” American So­cio­log­i­cal Review 86, no. 4 (2021): 6. 26. In their study of the professional practices of male and female juvenile court judges, Delphine Serre and Anne Paillet highlight gendered ways of relating to gender ste­reo­t ypes: female judges put gender ste­reo­t ypes at arm’s length by minimizing practices and speech that might seem “maternal,” whereas male judges are much less worried about being categorized by gender: Anne Paillet and Delphine Serre, “Les rouages du genre. La différenciation des pratiques de travail chez les juges des enfants,” Sociologie du Travail 56, no. 3 (2014): 342–364. 27. Bessière and Mille, “The Judge Is often a ­Woman,” e43–­e68. 28. Yoan Demoli and Laurent Willemez, “Les magistrats, un corps professionnel féminisé et mobile,” Infostat Justice 161 (2018). 29. Laurence Bachmann, “Money of Her Own: W ­ omen’s Strug­gle for Emancipation through Their Dealings with Money,” Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology 2, no. 1 (2011): 1–15. 30. This from the “4000 ­Family Cases Database” (see Statistical Appendix J for details). 31. Emilie Biland, Muriel Mille, and Hélène Steinmetz, “National Paths t­ owards Private Ordering: Professionals’ Jurisdictions and Separating C ­ ouples’ Privacy in the French and Canadian F ­ amily Justice Systems,” in Delivering ­Family Justice in the 21st ­Century, ed. Mavis Maclean, John Eekelaar, and Benoît Bastard (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 87–105. 32 Of the 568 contested divorce files archived in 2013 that we consulted and that ended up with a judicial decision, only 26 ­percent of ex-­spouses had liquidated their marital property prior to the divorce decree (“4000 F ­ amily Cases Data­­ base”). See Statistical Appendix K for more details. 33. Thomas Morin, “Écarts de revenus au sein des ­couples. Trois femmes sur quatre gagnent moins que leur conjoint,” INSEE Première 1492 (2014).



NOTES TO PAGES 182–189  299

34. This was demonstrated in Irène Théry’s pioneering study of f­ amily cases in the 1980s, Le démariage. Justice et vie privée (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1993) and confirmed by the Collectif Onze’s study, Au Tribunal des ­Couples, in the 2010s. 35. According to INSEE’s “Cadre de vie et sécurité” survey, in 2012–2017, 71 ­percent of ­people declaring themselves a victim of vio­lence at the hands of a past or pre­sent domestic partner in the past year w ­ ere ­women. See Hélène Guedj and André Moreau, “Rapport sur l’enquête ‘Cadre de vie et sécurité’ 2018: Victimation, délinquance et sentiment d’insécurité,” French Ministry of the Interior, December 2018. 36. Michael P. Johnson, A Typology of Domestic Vio­lence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Re­sis­tance, and Situational ­Couple Vio­lence (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2008); Catherine Cavalin, “Interroger les femmes et les hommes au sujet des vio­lences conjugales en France et aux États-­Unis: Entre mesures statistiques et interprétations sociologiques,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 32, no. 1 (2013): 64–76. 37. Source: S. G. Smith, X. Zhang, K. C. Basile, M. T. Merrick, J. Wang, M. Kresnow, and J. Chen, “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Vio­lence Survey (NISVS): 2015 Data Brief—­Updated Release” (Atlanta: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). According to this survey, an estimated 1 in 18 (5.5 ­percent, or about 6.6 million) w ­ omen in the United States experienced contact sexual vio­lence, physical vio­lence, and / or stalking by an intimate partner during the twelve months preceding the survey; about 1 in 20 (5.2 ­percent, or 5.8 million) men in the United States experienced contact sexual vio­lence, physical vio­lence, and / or stalking by an intimate partner during the twelve months preceding the survey. 38. Catherine Cavalin, “Comment le genre habite-­t-il les vio­lences? (et vice versa),” in Le monde privé des femmes. Genre et habitat dans la société française, ed. Anne Lambert, Pascale Dietrich-­R agon, and Catherine Bonvalet (Paris: Éditions de l’INED, 2018), 307. 39. Solenne Jouanneau, “Une protection sous conditions. Les magistrat·es de la famille face à la lutte contre les vio­lences masculines dans le ­couple” (HDR thesis, Université de Paris, 2022). 40. Solenne Jouanneau and Anna Matteoli, “Les vio­lences au sein des ­couples au prisme de la justice familiale. Invention et mise en œuvre de l’ordonnance de protection,” Droit et Société 99 (2018): 305–321.

7. The Par­tic­u­lar Hardships of Proletarian Ex-­Wives 1. Pierre Gilbert, “The Working Classes in Con­temporary France,” Books and Ideas 5 (2017), https://­booksandideas​.­net​/­IMG​/­pdf​/­2017​_­10​_­05​_­working​ _­classes​-­france​.­pdf; Olivier Schwartz, “Peut-on parler des classes populaires?,” La Vie des Idées, September 13, 2011, https://laviedesidees.fr/Peut-­on-­parler-­des​ -­classes​.­html.

300   NOTES TO PAGES 189–190

2. Thomas Morin, “Écarts de revenus au sein des ­couples: Trois femmes sur quatre gagnent moins que leur conjoint,” INSEE Première 1492 (2014). 3. Morin, “Écarts de revenus.” This proportion increases sharply between each decile: 22 ­percent in the second decile, 32 ­percent in the third, 50 ­percent in the fourth, and 60 to 70 ­percent for all the rest. 4. Élisabeth Algava, Kilian Bloch, and Isabelle Robert-­Bobée, “Les familles en 2020: 25 ­percent de familles monoparentales, 21 ­percent de familles nombreuses,” INSEE Focus 249 (2021). 5. Rossana Trifiletti, ed., “Study on Poverty and Social Exclusion among Lone-­ Parent House­holds,” Fondazione G. Brodolini for the Eu­ro­pean Commission, 2007, https://­ec​.­europa​.­eu​/­employment​_ ­social​/­social​_­inclusion​/­docs​/­2007​ /­study​_ ­lone​_­parents​_­en​.­pdf. For the United States, the National ­Women’s Law Center found that the poverty rate for families with c­ hildren headed by unmarried ­mothers in 2019 was 31 ­percent, compared to 5 ­percent for families with c­ hildren headed by unmarried ­fathers and 5 ­percent for families composed of a married c­ ouple with c­ hildren (Amanda Fins, “National Snapshot: Poverty among W ­ omen & Families,” National ­Women’s Law Center Fact Sheet, December 2020, https://­nwlc​.­org​/­wp​-­content​/­uploads​/­2020​/­12​/­Poverty​ Snapshot2020​.­pdf). See also Katrin Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single M ­ others Survive Welfare and Low-­Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997). 6. In Eu­rope, the poverty line is set in relative terms. A person is considered poor if his or her income is below a given percentage of the so-­called median living standard. The median living standard is the exact midpoint of living standards—­half the population earns more, half earns less. The poverty level accounts for the number of p ­ eople living in the same housing unit. To mea­sure ­these, INSEE uses a system of shares. The first adult in the h ­ ouse­hold is worth one ­whole share, all other ­people in the ­house­hold age 14 and up count as a half share, and ­those u ­ nder 14 are worth 0.3 share. For a glimpse of the prob­lems arising from this relative definition of poverty, especially for international comparison and global analyses, see François Bourguignon, The Globalization of In­equality, trans. Thomas Scott Railton (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2015); Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravaillion, “More Relatively-­Poor ­People in a Less Absolutely Poor World,” Review of Income and Wealth 59, no. 1 (2013): 1475–1491; Mike Savage, The Return of In­equality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 34–42. 7. Source: INSEE-­DGFiP-­Cnaf-­Cnav-­CCMSA, enquêtes Revenus fiscaux et sociaux 2017. Julien Blasco and Jorick Guillaneuf, “En 2017, les niveaux de vie progressent légèrement, les inégalités sont quasi stables,” INSEE Première 1772 (2019). 8. “Pauvreté en condition de vie de 2004 à 2016: Enquête statistique sur les ressources et conditions de vie,” INSEE Résultats (October 18, 2017),

















NOTES TO PAGES 190–192  301

https://­w ww​.­​.­fr​/­fr​/­statistiques​/­3135789​?­sommaire​=­3135798#consulter​ -­sommaire. 9. Source: INSEE permanent demographic sample, 2015. Sébastien Durier, “Après une rupture d’­union, l’homme reste plus souvent dans le logement conjugal,” INSEE Focus 91 (2017). 10. Source: INSEE “Housing” (logement) survey, 2006. Corentin Trevien, “Habiter en HLM: Quel avantage monétaire et quel impact sur les conditions de loge­­ ment?,” Économie et Statistique 471 (2014): 38. 11. Trevien, “Habiter en HLM.” 12. Trifiletti, “Study on Poverty and Social Exclusion”; Jacques Commaille and François de Singly, eds., The Eu­ro­pean F ­ amily: The ­Family Question in the Eu­ro­pean Community (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997). 13. For a comparison between France and Quebec, Canada, see Émilie Biland, ­Family Law in Action: Divorce and In­equality in Quebec and France (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2023). About the “welfare queen” ste­re­­o­ type in the United States and how it s­ haped the po­liti­c al debate and paved the way to reforms reducing social assistance and increasing surveillance and verification of recipients in 1996, see A. M. Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: New York University Press, 2004). 14. “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database” (see Statistical Appendix J), the 2,129 files for contested divorces and extra-­divorce cases archived in 2013. Excluding divorces by mutual consent (which, by definition, are a jointly filed petition), both partners filed a petition (­either jointly or individually) in 6 ­percent of cases, the ­woman filed a petition in 62 ­percent of cases, and the man in 32 ­percent of cases. 15. Inspection Générale des Affaires Sociales, Inspection des Finances, and Inspection Générale des Ser­vices Judiciaires, “Rapport sur la création d’une agence de recouvrement des impayés de pension alimentaire” (September 2016), https://­w ww​.­igas​.­gouv​.­fr​/­IMG​/­pdf​/­2016​-­071R​.­pdf. France is not the only country to have this prob­lem: According to a US Census Bureau report, 69.8 ­percent of custodial parents who ­were supposed to receive child support received ­either full or partial payments. This was a decrease from 1993, when 75.8 ­percent of custodial parents who ­were supposed to receive support received at least some payment. The proportion of custodial parents who ­were supposed to receive child support but received none increased from 24.2 ­percent in 1993 to 30.2 ­percent in 2017 (Timothy Grall, “Custodial ­Mothers and ­Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017” [May 2020], https://­w ww​.­census​.­gov​/­content​/­dam​/­Census​/­library​/­publications​/­2020 ​/­demo​/­p60​-­269​.­pdf). 16. “4000 F ­ amily Cases Database,” the 1,313 extra-­divorce or postdivorce cases. 17. For an intersectional analy­sis of gender and class in­equality in ­these procedures, see Émilie Biland, Sibylle Gollac, Hélène Oehmichen, Nicolas Rafin,

302   NOTES TO PAGES 192–200

and Hélène Steinmetz, “La classe, le genre, le territoire: Les inégalités procédurales dans la justice familiale,” Droit et société, 3, no. 106 (2020): 547–566. 18. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working- ­Class Life (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957), 224. 19. Yasmine Siblot, “ ‘Je suis la secrétaire de la famille!’ La prise en charge féminine des tâches administratives entre subordination et ressource,” Genèses 64 (2006): 46–66. 20. Zakia Belmokhtar, “Une pension alimentaire fixée par les juges pour deux tiers des enfants de parents séparés,” Infostat Justice 128 (2014). 21. This and all quotations of the French Civil Code come from the following English-­language version: https://­halshs​.­a rchives​-­ouvertes​.­fr​/­halshs​-­01385107​ /­document. Note that this translation obscures the Code’s exclusive use of masculine forms of words referring to ­people—­parent (male parent) but never parente (female parent), for example. When pos­si­ble and appropriate we have reintroduced gendered terms in En­glish (“his”) to bring the quotes closer to the original French version. 22. Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois, Myriam Doriat-­Duban, and Jean-­Claude Ray, “Child Support Order: How Do Judges Decide without Guidelines? Evidence from France,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Law and Economics 38, no. 3 (2014): 431–452. 23. Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples, 208ff. 24. Valérie Carrasco and Clément Dufour, “Les décisions des juges concernant les enfants de parents séparés ont fortement evolué dans les années 2000,” Infostat Justice 132 (2015). 25. Biland, ­Family Law in Action, 197. 26. See Patrick Parkinson, ­Family Law and the Indissolubility of Parenthood (Cam­­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) for an international comparison of ­family law in Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, and Australasia; for the French situation, see Françoise Dekeuwer-­Deffossez, “Rénover le droit de la famille: Propositions pour un droit adapté aux réalités et aux aspirations de notre temps: Rapport au Garde des Sceaux, Ministre de la Justice” (January 1, 1999), https://­w ww​.­v ie​-­publique​.­f r​/­rapport ​/­25791​-­renover​-­le​-­d roit​-­de​-­la​-­famille​ -­propositions​-­pour​-­un​-­droit​-­adapte. For discussion of “co-­parenting” and its implementation, see Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples, 178ff., and Biland, ­Family Law in Action. 27. This simulator can be found at http://­w ww​.­justice​.­fr/simulateurs/pensions​ /­bareme; on the history of the implementation of ­t hese guidelines in France, see Biland, ­Family Law in Action, 192ff. 28. Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois, Bruno Jeandidier, and Bruno Deffains, “Un barème de pension alimentaire pour l’entretien des enfants en cas de divorce,” Revue Française des Affaires Sociales 4 (2005): 101–132; Isabelle Sayn, Bruno Jeandidier, and Cécile Bourreau-­Dubois, “La fixation du montant des pensions alimentaires: Des pratiques et un barème,” Infostat Justice 116 (2012).



NOTES TO PAGES 200–209  303

29. Henri Martin, “Calculating the Standard of Living of a House­hold: One or Several Equivalence Scales?,” Economics and Statistics 491–492 (2017): 93–108. 30. Haut Conseil de la Famille, “Le ‘coût de l’enfant’: Rapport et propositions adoptés par consensus par le Haut Conseil de la Famille lors de sa séance du 9 juillet 2015,” https://­w ww​.­hcfea​.­fr​/­IMG​/­pdf​/­rapport​_­cout​_­de​_­l​_­enfant​_­def​.­pdf. 31. Ana Perrin-­Heredia, “The Social Logics of Indebtedness: The Management of House­hold Accounts in Working-­Class Environments,” Sociétés Contemporaines 76 (2009): 95–119. For the US context, see Sarah Halpern-­Meekin, Kathryn Edin, Laura Tach, and Jennifer Sykes, It’s Not Like I’m Poor: How Working Families Make Ends Meet in a Post-­Welfare World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 32. Florence Weber, Le travail au noir: Une fraude parfois vitale? (Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm, 2008). 33. Zakia Belmokhtar, “La contribution à l’entretien et l’education de l’enfant, deux ans après le divorce,” Infostat Justice 141 (2016): 4. 34. Solène Cordier, “Pensions alimentaires: Un nouveau système pour lutter contre les impayés,” Le Monde, September 19, 2019. 35. Biland, ­Family Law in Action, 223ff. 36. Union des Caisses Nationales de la Sécurité Sociale, “Document de Support concernant l’instance nationale de concertation branche famille,” Paris, July 12, 2017. 37. Amandine Mathivet, Hélène Ceretto, Hayet Iguertsira, and Xavier Zunigo, “Étude sur l’allocation de soutien familial en lien avec la contribution à l’entretien et l’education de l’enfant,” Dossier d’Étude CNAF 172 (2014). 38. Nathalie Auphant, “Pensions alimentaires: Bientôt un ser­vice public,” Actualités Sociales Hebdomadaires 3127 (2019). 39. Justine Faure, interview of Stéphanie Lamy, “Comment en finir avec les pensions alimentaires non payées?,” LCI, February 25, 2019. 40. Louis Morice, interview of Stéphanie Lamy, “Le non-­versement des pensions alimentaires est une vio­lence faite aux femmes,” L’Obs, March 8, 2019. 41. Biland, ­Family Law in Action. 42. For a comparison of welfare surveillance in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, see Vincent Dubois, Contrôler les assistés. Genèses et usages d’un mot d’ordre (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2021); Vincent Dubois, “Institutional Order, Interaction Order and Social Order: Administering Welfare, Disciplining the Poor,” Politiche sociali / Social Policies 3 (2019): 507–520. 43. Alexis Spire shows just how much easier it is for the tax administration to verify the income of working-­class ­people involved in the ­legal system than it is to do so for wealthier ­people, given that for the former they can cross the digital databases of vari­ous administrations of the welfare state. Spire, Faibles et puissants face à l’ impôt (Paris: Raisons d’Agir, 2012). 44. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Socie­ties, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: W. W. Norton, [1925] 2000).

304   NOTES TO PAGES 210–214

45. Biland, ­Family Law in Action, 187. 46. Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford Schram, Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Per­sis­tent Power of Race (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Hancock, The Politics of Disgust. As concerns the United States, see Leslie Joan Harris, “Questioning Child Support Enforcement for Poor Families,” ­Family Law Quarterly 45, no. 2 (2011): 157–172. 47. Timothy Grall, Custodial M ­ others and ­Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017, Current Population Reports (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2020), 60–269, https://­w ww​.­census​.­gov​/­content​/­dam​/­Census​/­library​/­publications​ /­2020​/­demo​/­p60​-­269​.­pdf. 48. For more on this point, regarding Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, see Kiran Mirchandani and Wendy Chan, Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty: Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada (Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2007); for the United States, see Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 49. John Gilliom, Overseers of the Poor: Surveillance, Re­sis­tance and the Limits of Privacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 27. 50. Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des ­couples, 219–224. 51. Ana Perrin Heredia, “La gestion du bud­get. Un pouvoir paradoxal pour des femmes de classes populaires,” in Le monde privé des femmes. Genre et habitat dans la société française, ed. Anne Lambert, Pascale Dietrich-­R agon, and Catherine Bonvalet, 193–212 (Paris: INED Éditions, 2018). 52. Louise Michel, The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel, ed. and trans. Bullitt Lowry and Elizabeth Ellington Gunter (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), 139.

Conclusion 1. Alexis Yamokoski and Lisa Keister, “The Wealth of Single W ­ omen: Marital Status and Parenthood in the Asset Accumulation of Young Baby Boomers in the United States,” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 167–194; Mariko Chang, Shortchanged: Why W ­ omen Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done about It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Siobhan Austen, Therese Jefferson, and Rachel Ong, “The Gender Gap in Financial Security: What We Know and D ­ on’t Know about Australian House­holds,” Feminist Economics 20, no. 3 (2014): 25–52; Alyssa Schneebaum, Miriam Rehm, Katharina Mader, and Katarina Hollan, “The Gender Wealth Gap across Eu­ro­pean Countries,” Review of Income and Wealth 64, no. 2 (2018): 295–331; Tracey Warren, Karen Rowlingson, and Claire Whyley, “Female Finances: Gender Wage Gaps and Gender Assets Gaps,” Work, Employment and Society 15, no. 3 (2001): 465–488. 2. Pierre Bourdieu, “On the ­Family as a Realized Category,” Theory, Culture & Society 13, no. 3 (1996): 19–26; Remi Lenoir, “The F ­ amily as a Social Institu-























NOTES TO PAGES 214–216  305

tion: Strug­gles over Legitimate Repre­sen­ta­tions of Real­ity,” in Symbolic Power in Cultural Contexts, ed. Jarmo Houtsonen and Ari Antikainen (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2008), 31–42. 3. From the scores of pos­si­ble references, we single out two for their par­tic­u­lar impact: Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society (Aldershot, UK: Arena, [1972] 1993); Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analy­sis,” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–1075. 4. Two introductory manuals in French attest to this: Laure Bereni, Sébastien Chauvin, Alexandre Jaunait and Anne Revillard, Introduction aux études sur le genre (Brussels: De Boeck Université, 2012), and Isabelle Clair, Sociologie du genre (Paris: Armand Colin, 2012). See also Françoise Thebaud, “Writing ­Women’s and Gender History in France: A National Narrative?,” Journal of ­Women’s History 19, no. 1 (2007): 167–172. 5. Laure Bereni, “Une nouvelle génération de chercheuses sur le genre. Réflexions à partir d’une expérience située,” Contretemps, June 19, 2012, https://­w ww​ .­contretemps​.­eu​/­une​-­nouvelle​-­generation​-­de​-­chercheuses​-­sur​-­le​-­genre​ -­reflexions​-­a​-­partir​-­dune​-­experience​-­situee​/­; Isabelle Clair and Maxime Cervulle, “Lire entre les lignes: Le féminisme matérialiste face au féminisme poststructuraliste,” Comment s’en Sortir? 4 (2017): 1–22. 6. Thebaud, “Writing W ­ omen’s and Gender History.” 7. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from ­Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Patricia H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990). 8. Bereni et al., Introduction aux études sur le genre, 18. 9. Christine Delphy, “The Main ­Enemy,” Feminist Issues 1 (1980): 23–40; Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (London: Routledge, [1992] 1995). 10. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: House­work, Reproduction, and Feminist Strug­gle (Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions; Oakland: PM Press, 2012); Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costa, The Power of ­Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol, UK: Falling Wall Press, 1972). 11. Elsa Galerand and Danièle Kergoat, “The Subversive Potential of ­Women’s Relation to Work,” Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy and Social Theory 18 (2017): 52–65. 12. This investment can be seen in the founding of the journal Travail, Genre et Sociétés in 1999 by Marlaine Cacouault-­Bitaud, Delphine Gardey, Jacqueline Laufer, Margaret Maruani, Chantal Rogerat, Rachel Silvera, and Philippe Alonzo. 13. Anne Revillard, “Work / ­Family Policy in France: From State Familialism to State Feminism?,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the F ­ amily 20, no. 2 (2006): 133–150. 14. This specifically French aspect is demonstrated in work comparing France and Quebec: Émilie Biland, Families Encounter the Law: Divorce Policy and

306   NOTES TO PAGES 216–217

In­equality in France and Quebec (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2022); Anne Revillard, “What Policy for ­Women? A Comparison between France and Québec,” Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée 15, no. 4 (2008): 687–704. 15. Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); David Halperin, “The Normalization of Queer Theory,” Journal of Homo­sexuality 45, no. 2–4 (2003). 16. Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-­Deri, “Masculinism and the Antifeminist Countermovement,” Social Movement Studies 11, no. 1 (2012): 21–39; Anne-­ Marie Devreux, “ ‘Le droit, c’est moi.’ Formes contemporaines de la lutte des hommes contre les femmes dans le domaine du droit,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 28 (2009): 36–51; Aurélie Fillod-­Chabaud, “Dénonciation, régulation et réforme du droit de la famille par les groupes de pères séparés: Ce que nous apprend la comparaison France-­Québec,” Canadian Journal of ­Women and the Law 28, no. 2 (2016): 617–664. 17. Michael P. Johnson, A Typology of Domestic Vio­lence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Re­sis­tance and Situational ­Couple Vio­lence (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2008); Pauline Delage, “­A fter Year Zero: A Comparative History of the Fight against Rape in France and the United States,” Critique Internationale 70, no. 1 (2016): 21–35. 18. Bernard Lahire, The Plural Actor, trans. David Fernbach (Cambridge: Polity Press, [2001] 2011); Bernard Lahire, Tableaux de famille. Heurs et malheurs scolaires en milieux populaires (Paris: Gallimard, [1995] 2017); Deborah Reed-­Danahay, Education and Identity in Rural France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Elliot B. Weininger and Annette Lareau, “Translating Bourdieu into the American Context: The Question of Social Class and Family-­School Relations,” Poetics 31 (2003): 375–402. 19. Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, [1993] 1999), 507–513. 20. Mike Savage, The Return of In­equality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), 53–72. 21. Anaïs Collet, Rester bourgeois. Les quar­tiers populaires, nouveaux chantiers de la distinction (Paris: La Découverte, 2015). 22. Savage, The Return of In­equality, 245–250. 23. Russel Travis and Vandanna Kohli, “The Birth Order F ­ actor: Ordinal Position, Social Strata, and Educational Achievement,” Journal of Social Psy­chol­ogy 135, no. 4 (1995): 499–507; Joseph Price, “Parent-­Child Quality Time: Does Birth Order ­Matter?,” Journal of H ­ uman Resources 43, no. 1 (2008): 240–265; Sibylle Gollac, “The Ambiguity of Male Primogeniture. Inheritance and the Transmission of Social Status from Generation to Generation,” Revue Française de Sociologie 54, no. 4 (2013): 709–738; Eric Widmer, ­Family Configurations: A Structural Approach to F ­ amily Diversity (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010). See also the EU-­f unded proj­ect “The Social Mobility of Siblings in Comparative



NOTES TO PAGES 218–226  307

Perspective” (SIBMOB), directed by Kristian Bernt Karlson at the University of Copenhagen, https://­w ww​.­sociology​.­ku​.­d k ​/­research​-­projects​/­research​ _­projects​/­current​-­projects​/­sibmob​/­. 24. John K. Antill, Jacqueline J. Goodnow, Graeme Russell, and Sandra Cotton, “The Influence of Parents and ­Family Context on C ­ hildren’s Involvement in House­hold Tasks,” Sex Roles 34, no. 3–4 (1996): 215–236; Candace West and Don Zimmerman, “­Doing Gender,” Gender and Society 1, no. 2 (1987); Martine Court, Julien Bertrand, Géraldine Bois, Gaële Henri-­Panabière, and Olivier Vanhée, “Qui débarasse la ­t able? Enquête sur la socialisation domestique primaire,” Actes de la Récherche en Sciences Sociales 215 (2016): 73–83. 25. This situation is in marked contrast with common-­law countries, where only a minority of judges are w ­ omen: In the United States, only slightly more than a third of all state and federal judges are ­women (Center for ­Women in Government and Civil Society, 2016); in the United Kingdom, only 38 ­percent of district judges and 30 ­percent of high-­court judges are ­women (Judicial Database 2021); and in Canada, about a third of federal and provincial judges are ­women (Ryerson University’s Diversity Institute, 2017). 26. For France, see Anne Revillard, Karine Lempen, Laure Béréni, Alice Debauche, and Emmanuelle Latour, “À la recherche d’une analyse féministe du droit dans les ecrits francophones,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 28 (2009): 4–10; Anne-­Marie Devreux and Coline Cardi, “Le genre et le droit: Une co-­production,” Cahiers du Genre 57 (2014): 5–18; Stéphanie Hennette-­ Vauchez, Marc Pichard, and Diane Roman, eds., La Loi et le Genre (Paris: Éditions CNRS, 2014). In the United States, feminist ­legal studies are part of a more general trend of critical analy­sis of the law, known as critical ­legal studies, which has its roots in the left-­wing protest movements that emerged in the 1960s–1970s in the wake of the civil rights movement. See Catharine MacKinnon, ­Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989); Susan B. Boyd and Elizabeth A. Sheehy, “Feminist Perspectives on Law: Canadian Theory and Practice,” Canadian Journal of ­Women and the Law 2 (1986): 1–52.

Statistical Appendixes 1. For the history of ­these surveys, see Stefan Lollivier, “L’Insee et les enquêtes sur les patrimoines,” Economie et Statistique 374–375 (2004): 3–7. 2. Éric Gautier and Cédric Houdré, “Estimation des inégalités dans l’Enquête Patrimoine 2004,” Economie et statistique 417–418 (2009): 135–152. 3. Luc Arrondel, François Guillaumat-­Tailliet, and Daniel Verger, “Montants du patrimoine et des actifs: Qualité et représentativité des déclarations des ménages,” Economie et Statistique 296–297 (1996): 145–164.

308   NOTES TO PAGES 226–234

4. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014). 5. Guy Desplanques, “La chance d’être aîné,” Economie et Statistique 137 (1981): 53. 6. Desplanques, “La chance d’être aîné,” 56. 7. Russell Travis and Vandana Kohli, “The Birth Order ­Factor: Ordinal Position, Social Strata, and Educational Achievement,” Journal of Social Psy­chol­ogy 135, no. 4 (1995): 499–550; Joseph Price, “Parent-­Child Quality Time: Does Birth Order ­Matter?,” Journal of H ­ uman Resources 43, no. 1 (2008): 240–265. See the debate over the “confluence model” offered by Robert B. Zajonc: Robert Zajonc, “­Family Configuration and Intelligence,” Science 192, no. 4236 (1976): 227–236; Aaron Lee Wichman, Joe L. Rod­gers, and Robert C. MacCallum, “A Multilevel Approach to the Relationship between Birth Order and Intelligence,” Personality and Social Psy­chol­ogy Bulletin 32, no. 1 (2006): 117–127; Robert B. Zajonc and Frank J. Sulloway, “The Confluence Model: Birth Order as a Within-­Family or Between-­Family Dynamic?,” Personality and Social Psy­chol­ogy Bulletin 33, no. 9 (2007): 1187–1194. 8. Bernard Zarca, “L’héritage et la mobilité sociale au sein de la fratrie. I. L’héritage et la mobilité sociale différentielle des frères,” Population 2 (1995): 333. 9. Bernard Zarca, “L’héritage de l’indépendance professionnelle selon les lignées, le sexe et le rang dans la fratrie,” Population 2 (1993): 275–306; Zarca, “L’héritage et la mobilité sociale au sein de la fratrie. I. L’héritage et la mobilité sociale différentielle des frères,” 331–336; Zarca, “L’héritage et la mobilité sociale au sein de la fratrie. II. L’activité professionnelle et la mobilité sociale différentielle des sœurs,” Population 4–5 (1995): 1137–1154; Zarca, “Proximités socioprofessionnelles entre Germains et entre Alliés: Une comparaison dans la moyenne durée,” Population 1 (1999): 37–72. 10. Paul-­A ndré Rosental, Les sentiers invisibles. Espace, familles et migrations dans la France du XIXe siècle (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1999); Noël Bonneuil, Arnaud Bringé, and Paul-­A ndré Rosental, “Familial Components of First Migrations ­a fter Marriage in Nineteenth-­Century France,” Social History 33, no. 1 (2008): 36–59. 11. Jérôme Bourdieu, Gilles Postel-­Vinay, Paul-­A ndré Rosental, and Akiko Suwa-­Eisenmann, “La dispersion spatiale des familles: Un problème de taille. Les solidarités familiales de 1800 à 1940,” Recherches et Prévisions 77 (2004): 63–72. 12. Laurent Toulemon, “Combien d’enfants, combien de frères et soeurs depuis cent ans?,” Population et Sociétés 374 (2001). Since the 2010s, the proportion of minor c­ hildren growing up in a blended f­ amily has stabilized at around 9 ­percent in France (Elisabeth Algava, Kilian Bloch, and Vincent Vallès, “En 2018, 4 millions d’enfants mineurs vivent avec un seul de leurs parents au domicile,” INSEE Première 1788 (2020).



NOTES TO PAGES 236–241  309

13. Alain Desrosières, Alain Goy, and Laurent Thévenot, “L’identité sociale dans le travail statistique: La nouvelle nomenclature des professions et catégories socioprofessionnelles,” Economie et Statistique 152 (1983): 55–81. 14. Cédric Hugrée, Etienne Penissat, and Alexis Spire, Social Class in Eu­rope: New Inequalities in the Old World, trans. Rachel Gomme and Sanya Pelini (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2020). 15. On the difficulties of public statistics in recording same-­sex ­couples, see Maks Banens and Eric Le Penven. “Sex Miscoding in the Census and Its Effects on the Enumeration of Same-­Sex ­Couples,” Population 71, no. 1 (2016): 131–143. 16. Thibaut de Saint Pol, Aurélie Deney, and Olivier Monso, “Ménage et chef de ménage: Deux notions bien ancrées,” Travail, Genre et Sociétés 1, no. 11 (2004): 63–78. 17. Nicolas Frémeaux and Marion Leturcq, “Plus ou moins mariés: L’évolution du mariage et des régimes matrimoniaux en France,” Economie et Statistique 462–463 (2013): 125–151; Frémeaux and Leturcq, “Prenuptial Agreements and Matrimonial Property Regimes in France (1855–2010),” Explorations in Economic History 68 (2018): 132–142.

Acknowl­edgments

First and foremost, this book would not exist without the p ­ eople interviewed who agreed to share their f­amily lives or their professional practices with us. We warmly thank them. Almost two de­cades of research went into the writing of this book. This research work was sometimes carried out alone, but very often surrounded by friends and colleagues. Throughout t­ hese years, we benefited from the material support of our respective research centers in Paris: first the Centre Maurice-­Halbwachs, then IRISSO at the Paris-­Dauphine University (Céline) and CRESPPA-­C SU (Sibylle). We also shared many thoughts with our colleagues in t­ hese dif­fer­ent organ­izations. We received public grants that w ­ ere essential to conduct the research: from the French National Research Agency (ANR-­Ruptures proj­ect), from the French Ministry of Justice, from the French National ­Family Benefits Office (CNAF), from the city of Paris (Emergences JustineS program). We would like to thank all the members of the successive “Ruptures” and “JustineS” research groups. Our collective adventures since 2008, ­whether in seminars, in the field, around texts to be written, papers to be presented, or databases to be completed, made it pos­si­ble to do faster and better than any of us could have done alone. Part of the empirical material in this book comes directly from this collective research enterprise. Céline thanks the members of the jury for her habilitation defended in 2017 at EHESS under the title “The Wealth of Families”: Alexis Spire, Jérôme 311

312  Acknowledgments

Bourdieu, Rose-­Marie Lagrave, Philippe Steiner, Anne-­Catherine Wagner, and Florence Weber. This book would not have been pos­si­ble without the exceptional conditions of her stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in Prince­ton in 2016–2017. She is grateful to Viviana Zelizer, Joan Scott, Didier Fassin, Karen Engle, Andrew Dilts, Sida Liu, Thomas Dodman, and Peter Redfield for their very stimulating feedback on vari­ous drafts of this work. Sibylle thanks Delphine Serre for her decisive intervention in the completion of this work, and Florence Weber for leading her into the field of the ­family. She is grateful to the latter, as well as Alain Chenu, Jean-­Hugues Déchaux, Agnès Fine, Évelyne Serverin, and Philippe Steiner, members of her PhD defense committee in 2011 at EHESS for their reading and discussion of this doctoral work on ­family real estate strategies of social reproduction, which have nourished the pursuit of her research up to this book. She also thanks the economists who crossed her path on the study of the French Wealth survey, in par­tic­u­lar Nicolas Frémeaux, Anne Laferrère, Thomas Piketty, and Muriel Roger. We owe a ­great deal to our friends, relatives, and colleagues who read all or part of the first versions of the manuscript: Christian Baudelot, Paméla Beaufils, Laure Béréni, Émilie Biland, Isabelle Clair, Anne and Michel Gollac, Camille Herlin-­Giret, Paul Hobeika, Frédérique House­aux, Pascal Marichalar, and Julie Minoc. Thank you for your kind feedback and constant encouragement. We are also grateful to our French editor La Découverte for publishing the book in France. We thank Stéphane Beaud, Stéphanie Chevrier, Morgan Leho, Carole Lozano, Lysis Mettens, Aurélie Michel, Paul Pasquali, Delphine Ribouchon, Marie-­S oline Royer, Rémy Toulouse and Fabien Truong, who believed in this manuscript and helped change it into a better book. The adaptation to En­glish for an international audience was another journey that we safely and happily made accompanied by talented ­people. First and foremost, we thank Juliette Rogers for her translation of the book into En­ glish, and also for her flair in spotting inaccuracies in the original version. Thanks to her, the translation is often more precise than the original. In the first stages of the adaptation into En­glish, we benefited also from the translation work of Robert Fyke and Pascal Marichalar. Pascal was pre­sent at several key steps of the pro­cess, always encouraging us and convincing us that we could make it. Thanks a lot! We are very grateful to Thomas Piketty, who established the relationship with Ian Malcolm at Harvard University Press. The book found a new home with a lot of g­ reat ­people to care for it: Ian Malcolm and Olivia

Acknowledgments  313

Woods first, and then Emily Silk and Jillian Quigley, Alex Morgan, and John Donohue. Fi­nally, we are grateful to the dif­fer­ent organ­izations that provided the fund­ ­ing for this translation: the IDG-­Gender Institute, IRISSO at the Paris-­Dauphine University, CRESPPA-­CSU, and the JustineS Research Group.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by t indicate t­ ables. Abandon de famille–­Tolérance Zéro. See ­Family Abandonment–­Z ero Tolerance accountants, 81–82, 88, 92, 96, 101, 143, 152, 202; ­family members, 47–49, 135, 169 accounting, 13, 37, 103–104; expertise, 154; tax, 148, 151, 156. See also accountants; assets; calculation; estimation; reversed accounting; sexism; valuation; wealth accumulation: of cultural capital, 5, 50, 220; of economic capital, 5, 220; in the ­family, 17, 41; by men, 65; of positions, 44; of wealth, x, xiv, 52, 55, 214; by ­women, 13–14, 66, 70 affluent families, 13, 18, 56, 162. See also bourgeoisie; elite; upper classes; wealthier classes age, xi, 5, 13, 21, 23, 232–234, 239–240, 253; age being equal, 8, 59, 66, 67t, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; child support, 186; compensatory allowance, 160, 162, 169; difference in ­couples, 55–56, 61, 66, 79t, 108, 128, 241, 241–242, 243t, 244t; inheritance, 44, 122–123; marriage, 53; se­niors, 99t; socialization, 45, 62, 218. See also benefits; life expectancy; parents: aged

agriculture, 6, 22, 45. See also farms and farmers; land aid: ­family, 72; housing, 225; intergenerational, 28. See also ­legal aid Algeria and Algerians, x, 19, 25, 102–103, 198. See also Maghreb; North Africa alimony, 124, 147–151, 219 allocation: of the f­ amily home, 76; preferential, 115. See also property: preferential attribution allocation de soutien familial. See ­Family Support Benefit Amazon. See Scott, MacKenzie ancien régime, 41, 283n17 anthropology and anthropologists: economic, 35; Marxist, 34; social, x, 45, 50, 88, 209 anticipated relinquishing of share in reduction, 97, 118–119 appraisal: of assets, 83, 138, 176, 181–182, 219; counterappraisal, 166; costs, 166. See also assets; estimation; valuation; wealth: evaluation of appropriation: of inheritance, 217; of ­labor, 34, 215; of property, 152, 156; of wealth, 54, 121, 212, 214, 221

315

316  INDEX Argentina and Argentinians, 186 arrangements. See ­family economic arrangements; ­family wealth arrangements; formalization; legitimization; negotiation; privacy; production; sexism; tax assets, xi, 22, 84; circulation of, 34, 51, 75–77; complexity of, 92, 94, 152–153, 177; composition and volume of, 75–78, 84–86, 97, 104, 138, 145, 154–156, 221; control of, xii, 10, 61, 106, 169, 213; ­couple’s, xii, 60–61, 98, 109, 141–148, 177, 183, 254–257, 257t; distribution of, 9, 12, 32, 82–83, 131, 255; estimation of, 30, 110–112, 125, 130–131, 134, 136, 180; ­family, 35, 37, 50, 70, 76–77, 89, 123, 164; financial, 9, 78, 104, 110, 117, 138, 225, 230; ­house­hold asset data, xi–­x iii, 9–10, 28–31, 54, 68, 152, 213–214, 225–230; international, 103; liquid, 51, 77, 92, 116; management of, 65, 78, 80, 107–108, 123–124, 169, 177, 227–228; physical, 50, 115; structuring, 50–51, 114–116, 118–119, 135, 139, 185; symbolic, 20–21, 53, 114; valuation of, 12, 88, 109–118, 131, 145, 226; with or without, 14, 77, 104, 185; worth of, 30, 110, 117, 171. See also accounting; appraisal; business; community property; dis­ tribution; estate; estimation; ­f amily business; gifts; housing; inheritance; inventory; liquidation; management; marital regime; notaires; portfolio; preservation; professional assets; property; real estate; t­ hings; transfer; valuation; wealth Austen, Jane, 106 Australia, 33, 137, 213 Austria, 137 banks, 37, 46, 126; accounts, x, xii, 30, 108, 110, 144, 155, 205; bankers, 92, 143, 182, 219; joint bank accounts, x, 37, 64; loans, 35, 46, 63, 64, 182; statements, 155, 211 Bar, 76, 90–91, 100, 124, 141, 154, 204 bare owner­ship. See owner­ship: bare

Baye, Nathalie. See Hallyday, Johnny Béarn, 19, 50, 216 Belgium, 41, 49 Belloubet, Nicole, 207 benefits: active solidarity income, 155, 209; child, 185, 191; housing assistance, 1, 185, 209; minimum old-­a ge, 71, 77; retirement, 165, 185; single-­parent, 188, 190; surviving spouse, 68–69, 159, 161, 285n48. See also compensatory allowance; ­family benefits; ­Family Support Benefit; maternity leave bequests, 26, 27, 35, 123, 177 Bezos, Jeff, 2–4, 114, 127. See also Scott, MacKenzie birth, consequences on employment, 168–169, 177. See also birth order birth order, 17, 40, 46, 49–52, 217–218, 232–235, 246t, 249t bonds, 17, 78, 114, 117. See also assets: financial; stocks Bourdieu, Pierre, x, 19–20; capital, 14, 37, 94, 217; logic of practice, x, 132; social reproduction, x–xi, 19–20, 42, 216–217 bourgeoisie, 14, 19, 96, 171, 217; economic fraction of, 82, 169, 173; local, 86, 144; grande bourgeoisie, 117, 145; provincial, 174. See also propertied classes; upper classes; wealthier classes Bousquet, Danièle, 161. See also French Planned Parenthood breakdown. See conjugal separation ­brothers: inheritance, xiii, 10–11, 43–46, 56–58, 68–70, 106–107, 116–119, 133–139; number of, 232, 234–235. See also siblings; s­ isters bud­gets: balanced, 2, 211; ­family, 2, 36; issues, 187–188, 191, 211; monthly, 183, 188; ­women’s, 209–211. See also control; management: bud­get business: as asset, 30, 37, 115, 125, 226; bankruptcy, 126–127; businessman, 15–16, 86, 153, 158, 174, 183; businesspeople, 100; businesswoman, 121; capital, 30, 76; in divorces, 126–127, 131; head of, 45, 78–79, 117, 148, 151, 166, 172, 237–238; holdings, 36, 96, 153; ­legal

INDEX  317 professionals and, 76, 81–82, 96, 145, 158; in marriage, 78–79, 97, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; notaires’, 89–90, 105; ­owners, 22, 50, 126–127, 132, 150, 172, 226; shares, 4, 45, 51, 105, 115, 138, 169, 230; well-­advised CEO, 80–82. See also assets; ­family business; hierarchy: business; management: business; owner­ship: business; parents: business-­owning; professional assets; property: professional; self-­employment calculation: compensatory allowance, 131, 164; of cost of child care, 199, 202; divorce, 149t, 170; inheritance, 104, 185; property, 109, 114, 125, 136; tax, 139, 148. See also accounting; child support; estimation Canada, 153; child support, 151, 209; inheritance, 137; ­legal practices, 33, 106, 288n17, 307n25; life expectancy, 66; surnames, 284n26; unmarried c­ ouples, 161; wealth in­equality, 213; welfare, 301n13, 304n48. See also North Amer­i­ca; Quebec cantonnement des libéralités. See “limitation of gift” mea­sure capital. See Bourdieu, Pierre; cultural capital; economic capital; educational capital; gender; Marx; Karl; Piketty, Thomas capitalism, 4–5, 13, 17, 23–24, 32–34, 212 care: of aged parents, 10, 286n3; of ­children, ix, 6–8, 10, 58, 62, 130, 147, 172, 188, 196–199; of dependents, 35; of a disabled relative, 35, 71, 118 ­c areer: calculation of compensatory allowance, 159–161; gender in­equality, ix, 56, 59, 64, 69, 167, 218–220; judges’, 158, 171–174, 197; ­lawyers’, 94, 109; men’s, 14, 43, 49, 54, 62, 147, 182; ­women’s, x, 5, 8, 84, 196, 201. See also income; judges; ­labor: market; l­awyers; ­legal professionals; mobility Catala, Pierre, 118–119 child: best interest of, 195–196; child-­rearing, 5, 22, 33, 191, 197–201; raising, xi, 131, 151, 167, 185, 189–191, 199–201, 207. See

also birth order; care; child physical custody; child support; cost: of ­children; ­daughters; education; needs; siblings; sons child physical custody, 111, 128–129, 179, 187, 192, 200, 256t; shared, 128, 151, 195–196; sole, 1, 189 child support, x, 35, 124, 175, 191–192, 195, 220; calculation of, 6, 155, 166, 186–188, 194–195, 199–202; guidelines, 199–202; paid or unpaid, 2, 179, 191, 204–210, 216; request, 103, 186–188, 191–194, 202–204; taxation of, 151–152. See also ­Family Abandonment–­Z ero Tolerance; ­Family Support Benefit; income circulation. See wealth: circulation Civil Code, 17, 26, 29, 108, 110, 206; in accordance or in discordance with, 42, 51, 118, 135, 164; Article 270, 130, 159–160, 164; Article 271, 130–131, 159–160, 164, 176, 200; Article 276, 161; Article 371-2, 194; Article 735, 105; Article 757, 122; Article 826, 115; Articles 205–207, 72; default laws, 60, 78; of 1804, 40, 105–107, 114–115, 122; reforms, 105–108, 114–115, 118, 122, 137 civil law, xi, xiv, 12, 98, 113, 158, 185. See also Civil Code; f­ amily law civil real estate companies. See real estate civil ­unions, 32, 65, 161, 242, 244t–247t class, 11–12, 212–213; background, 24, 132; in­equality, ix, xii–­x iv, 13, 20, 24–28, 31, 37–38, 75, 226; society, x, xi, 220; structure, 5. See also bourgeoisie; ­middle classes; propertied classes; upper classes; wealthier classes; working classes clients: common interest with, 87–88; differences in treatment of, 75, 90–94; elite, 95, 100, 101; favored clientele, 89–90; privileged clientele, 85, 96, 103; selected, 86–87, 91, 96; solvent, 85, 93, 100, 154; trust and distrust, 88, 92, 142, 144, 154; wealthiest, 97, 101, 140, 145. See also ­lawyers; ­legal aid; notaires Clinton, Bill. See Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Hillary, 15–17 Cognac area, x, 11, 45, 116–117

318  INDEX cohabiting relationship, xii, 31, 55, 60, 65, 67t, 161, 242, 244t–247t. See also civil ­unions; marriage collaborative law, 98–101, 148–149. See also divorce commerce, 6, 22, 45, 86; commercial business, 115; commercial exchange, 6 common law, 61, 106–107, 158 communauté de biens réduite aux acquêts, 60, 230. See also marital regime communauté universelle, 60. See also marital regime community property, 29–30, 56, 65, 80–81, 107–108, 125–131, 142, 177–178; reimbursements to, 178 compensatory allowance, 76, 103, 109, 158–171, 182–185, 254, 259; judges’ view on, 171–178; reversed accounting, 112, 131–132. See also calculation; education; income; negotiation conflict, 35, 83, 114; divorce, 85, 111, 171; inheritance, 40–41, 133–138; of interests, 81; parental, 205, 255. See also consensus; divorce; ­family: peace; ­family economic arrangements; ­family wealth arrangements conjugal separation, x–­x ii, 11–12, 28, 74, 168, 174, 189, 216; economic consequences of, 31–34, 64–68, 128, 151, 184–185, 190–192, 210–211; procedures, 76, 101, 141, 147, 178. See also child support; divorce consensus, 83, 110, 114, 120, 132, 139–140, 150, 156, 180. See also conflict; f­ amily: peace; f­ amily economic arrangements; ­family wealth arrangements contracts, 12, 75, 106–108, 260; employment, 63, 188, 192, 198, 262; marriage, xxi, 60–61, 76–80, 95, 97, 107, 121, 230. See also marital regime control: over decisions, 62; over estate, 123; of ­family business, 4; of money, 36–37, 221; professions, 76; social control, 63; over ­women, 209–211. See also assets: control of; bud­gets; power; time; wealth: control of co-­parenting. See parenting

cost: of breakdown, 32; of ­children, 6, 197, 199–202; of daily life, 56; of education, 21, 28, 43; of housing, 27, 126, 180, 194, 217; ­legal, 166, 286n2; of marriage, 146; of notarial practice, 87, 288n23; opportunity, 199; of retirement home, 72–73; tax, 141. See also appraisal; estimation; price ­couples: different-­sex, xii, 28, 32, 54–60, 182, 185, 218; same-­sex, 309n15. See also age; civil ­unions; cohabiting relationship; marriage Court of Appeals, 85, 101, 157, 164, 170–178, 204, 206, 252. See also ­family court; hearing; judges; judiciary courts. See Court of Appeals; f­ amily court; hearing credit. See loans cultural capital, x, 19–20, 37, 94, 97–100, 104, 172, 213, 217–220. See also Bourdieu, Pierre; educational capital; resources ­daughters: dispossession of, 119; and divorce, 147, 179–181, 187, 198, 206; domestic ­labor, 70, 73; education of, 5, 43–44; eldest, 48, 57, 146, 232; family business, 45–46, 153; firstborn, 51–52, 52t, 235t; and inheritance, 40, 42, 50–52, 70, 82, 105–107, 113–114; in media, 41, 120, 122; only, 51, 52t; youn­g est, 56, 58 death, 74, 77, 82, 115, 121, 287n12; of parents, 16, 37, 40, 50, 69, 135–139; of a spouse, 61, 68, 98, 123, 260 debt. See loans default: ­father’s name attributed by, 53; laws, 98; marital regime, 60–65, 78, 80, 107, 177; masculine form of nouns as, 89, 108. See also Civil Code; marital regime; name Delphy, Christine, 32–33 discretion, 77, 121, 131, 143 discrimination: captured in surveys, 25; in inheritance, 106; on the l­abor market, 8, 22, 60, 218; against ­women in m ­ atters of wealth, xi, 6, 90, 107–108 disposable share of an estate. See estate

INDEX  319 distribution, 34, 42; equal and unequal, 17, 40–42, 106, 110–120, 136, 178, 214, 219; of estate, xiv, 106, 139–141, 219; of inheritance, 51, 77, 136, 219; of property, 110, 117, 124; re­distribution, 18, 185, 210; and succession, 134. See also assets; estate; income: distribution; inheritance; inter vivos distributions; property; wealth division, of an estate, 14, 40, 42, 51, 76, 109–110, 127, 176, 214. See also sexual division of ­labor divorce, 31–33, 61–64, 73, 91, 102–103, 124–127, 141, 175–176; agreements, 100, 175–176, 194, 195, 254, 258–259; at-­fault and no-­fault, 33, 102–103, 169–170; contested, 31, 90–91, 148, 176, 252, 255–258; decree, 169–170, 180, 254, 260–261; files, 31, 80–82, 85, 96, 130, 202, 252–262; by mutual consent, 33, 91, 100, 124–132, 141–151, 175–176, 182, 252–258; post­ divorce, 103, 186, 192, 252; procedures, 33, 102–103, 141–148, 155, 175–180, 184, 191–193, 252–260. See also alimony; child physical custody; child support; compensatory allowance; Pursglove, Sarah; Scott, MacKenzie domestic ­labor, ix–­x ii, 7, 32, 36, 113, 161, 167, 174, 182, 199–201, 211, 218. See also homemaking and homemakers; ­house­hold production; ­house­work; reproductive ­labor; unpaid ­labor domestic ­mental load, 8, 272n25 domination: economic, ix; masculine, 60, 215, 221; relations of, x, 58, 216–217; social, 13. See also Bourdieu, Pierre donors: gifts and inheritance, 26, 97, 108, 121, 138, 291n8; philanthropy, 26. See also gifts; inheritance; philanthropy; recipients Dubos, Christelle, 207 Durkheim, Émile, 18 dynasties, American, 88 economic capital, x–xi, 4–5, 19–20, 50, 86–89, 100, 124, 212–220. See also Bourdieu, Pierre; resources

economics and economists, x, 18, 23, 26–29, 34–35, 163, 171, 199, 213 economy, 17–18, 24, 34; po­liti­cal, 215; sectors of, 45; wage-­earning, 18, 22. See also gig economy education, x–­x i; attainments, 21, 92, 135, 245t; calculation of child support, 194–195, 201, 204, 211, 232–233; calculation of compensatory allowance, 159–160; degrees, 113; expenses, 35, 117; ­f utures, 5, 232; higher, 20, 58, 173, 192, 219; investment, 15, 28, 44; level, 226; qualification, 212, 217, 237; secondary, 47; sector, 8; special education, 62–63; system, 50, 57, 297n20; vocational, 47–48, 61–62, 177. See also costs; educational capital; ­family: educational strategies; price educational capital, x, 5, 19–21, 44, 218, 233. See also cultural capital Egypt and Egyptians, 155 elderhood, 234. See also birth order; ­brothers; ­daughters; siblings; ­sisters; sons elite, 18, 20, 95, 97, 100–101, 172; judiciary, 158 emotions, 11, 19–20, 33–34, 40, 62, 73. See also feelings; love ­England, w ­ omen and conjugal homes, 128. See also United Kingdom entails, 106–107 estate: advisors, 152; disposable share of, 110, 121; distribution of, xiii–­x iv, 106, 140–141; insolvent, 85; partitioning, xiii, 13–14, 43, 98, 106, 113, 131, 141–142, 219; planning, 41–42, 88, 95, 109, 116–117, 214; reserved shares of, 118; tax, 26, 137–140; transfers, 51, 52t, 225, 229, 231–232, 235t; ­widows’ rights on, 122–123. See also division; management; property; reserved portion; settlement estimation: in the calculation of compensatory allowance, 160, 176; cost of a child, 201; overestimation, 31, 116; underestimation, 16, 31, 110, 147, 183, 185; of wealth, 10, 29–31, 112, 125–126, 140–144. See also accounting; assets; valuation; wealth

320  INDEX Eu­rope, xi, 6, 18, 21–24, 47; divorce rate, 64, 285n39; home owner­ship, 22, 128; inheritance taxation, 137; ­labor market, 59; ­legal practices, 106, 158, 175; living ­a fter separation, 31, 128, 131; philanthropy, 26; poverty, 189–191, 300n6; public education, 21; statistics, 237; time-­use studies, 7; wealth in­equality, 23–24 evaluation. See estimation; valuation; wealth: evaluation ex-­husband, 6, 102, 155, 169, 180–181 ex-­partners, 111, 184–185, 202–203, 211, 220 exploitation, 32, 212; of the l­abor of (married) ­women, xi, 5, 32–33, 199, 215 ex-­spouses, 75, 124, 129t, 158–163, 170, 175–178, 254–259, 298n32 ex-­wife, 112, 127, 147, 155, 182–183, 219 ­family: case studies, xii, 11–13, 41–42; educational strategies, 216; ­grand narrative of the modern f­ amily, 17, 20–21; life, xiii, 10, 34, 56, 60, 199; line, 19, 89, 123–124, 132; nuclear, 17; peace, 13, 82–83, 132–135, 156, 294. See also Bourdieu, Pierre; conflict; consensus; ­family business; f­ amily court; ­family economic arrangements; ­family law; family-­law professionals; ­family strategies of social reproduction; ­family wealth arrangements; home; h ­ ouse­hold; lineage; mobility: upward strategies; single-­parent ­house­holds; sociology and sociologists: of the f­ amily; solidarity ­Family Abandonment–­Zero Tolerance, 152, 208 ­family benefits, 163, 187–188; offices, 187–188, 191, 193, 207–211, 220. See also ­Family Support Benefit ­family business, 29, 35; as asset, 51, 114; bankruptcy, 126; in divorce, 126, 165–166, 169–170, 176–177; notaires and, 120–121; shares, 45, 50, 116, 138; structuring asset, 116; successor, 35, 42–44, 47; taxation, 138; transfer, x, 11, 19, 42–46, 116–118, 120, 123, 220; wives, 165–166, 169–170, 176–177. See also

assets; business; control: of ­family business; ­daughters: family business; siblings: in f­ amily businesses; sociology and sociol­ ogists: of ­family businesses; sons: ­family business ­family court: fieldwork, 12–14, 157–158; relation to ­lawyers and notaries, 77, 80–81, 112, 134, 175–176; relation to tax administration, 142. See also child support; compensatory allowance; Court of Appeals; divorce; judges; judiciary; l­egal aid ­family economic arrangements, xiv, 11–13, 34–42, 74–77, 103, 151, 164, 174–176 ­family law, xii, 81, 90, 101, 109, 184–185, 191, 197 family-­law professionals, xiii, 77, 102, 104, 113. See also ­family court; judges; ­lawyers; ­legal professionals; notaires ­family strategies of social reproduction, xii, 13, 20, 42–43, 53, 70, 84–85, 106, 131, 216–220 ­Family Support Benefit, 187–188, 191, 195, 207–209. See also ­family benefits ­family wealth arrangements, 10–13, 37–38, 43–44, 58–60, 81–85, 100–101, 111–117, 182–184, 255–260 farms and farmers, x, 19–21, 45–50, 61–64, 87–88, 105–117, 125–127, 166; in socioprofessional categories, 237–238. See also agriculture; Bourdieu, Pierre; Cognac area; ­family business; land; professional assets ­fathers: employment, 168; in f­ amily case studies, 61–64, 68–69, 72–73, 179–183; inheritance, 39–40, 120–122, 133–136, 217, 291n8; name, 52–53, 283n22; of notaire, 87–88, 115, 119, 144; poverty, 300n5; power, 41; transmission, x. See also child physical custody; child support; ­fathers’ rights organ­izations; parenting; parents; patriarchy ­fathers’ rights organ­izations, 158, 172, 295n4 Federici, Silvia, “reproductive l­abor,” 33 feelings, xiv, 17–18, 91. See also emotions; love fees: ­legal, 72, 82, 92, 102, 176, 281n31; notarial, 75–76, 81, 88, 140, 143–144. See also ­lawyers; ­legal aid; notaires

INDEX  321 feminism, x–­x ii, 152, 161, 208, 214–216; ­legal studies, 220; nineteenth-­century, 211; second wave, 5, 32–34, 272. See also Marxist feminists; materialist feminists formalization: of economic arrangements, 11, 13, 83–84, 113, 139. See also ­family wealth arrangements fortune, 16–18, 73, 88, 145, 153; Bezos’s, 3, 6, 127; wealth tax on private fortunes, 30. See also wealthier classes France: age difference in ­couples, 55; divorce rate, 64, 285n40; domestic vio­lence, 183; gender wealth gap, 9; home owner­ship, 22; gender income gap, 60, 182; inheritance taxation, 134, 137; ­labor market, 22, 168; life expectancy, 66; retirement, 68, 72; philanthropy, 26; poverty, 188–190; public education, 21; racial wealth gap, 25; living a­ fter separation, 31, 128; time-­use studies, 7, 60; unmarried ­couples, 161; wealth in­equality, 23–24, 26–30. See also ancien régime; Civil Code; French National Assembly; French Revolution French National Assembly, 118, 161 French Planned Parenthood, 161. See also Bousquet, Danièle French Revolution, 18, 107 French Wealth Survey, 9, 11, 29–31, 225–235, 240, 241, 248 full owner­ship. See owner­ship: full gender: of capital, 12, 213; of cultural capital, 217–219; equality (policy), 6, 36, 168, 210; identity, 261; income gap, 8–9, 60, 189; in­equality, ix, 4, 13, 31, 37, 56–59, 75, 103, 212–221; and judging, xiv, 168, 220; neutrality, 89, 108, 147, 172; norms, 36; order, x, 221; of real estate, 127; studies, 33, 35, 214–216; wealth gap, 8–11, 13, 28–31, 64, 213–214. See also legitimization: of the gender order; sex categories; sexism; sexual division of ­l abor generations, 19, 26, 38, 49, 60, 65, 89, 215. See also aid; gifts; intergenerational giving

Germany, 7, 22, 106; socioeconomic panel, 9, 28, 31 gifts: data, 225–226, 231–232, 235t; in divorce, 169–170; financial, x; formal or informal, 135, 139; gradual, 121; inequalities, 27; intergenerational inter vivos, 97; inter vivos, 26–27, 37, 42, 50–52, 107, 235t; “limitation of gift” mea­sure, 97, 123–124; manual, 138–139, 141; Mauss’s, 209; pre­sent, 63, 190; ­simple, 85, 135–136; taxation, 76, 97, 134, 137–140; as a type of economic arrangement, 10, 22, 113; value, 27, 49, 136; weight in wealth, 24. See also anticipated relinquishing of share in reduction; gift to the survivor; inheritance; inter vivos distribution; transfer gift to the survivor, 69, 97–98, 99t, 122, 159, 248, 249t–251t gig economy, xi, 4, 22, 62 Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests), 2, 5, 207 glass ceiling, 8, 59, 172 Global W ­ omen’s Strike, 215 Godelier, Maurice, 34, 50 grandparents, 26, 61, 63, 278n56 Hallyday, David. See Hallyday, Johnny Hallyday, Jade. See Hallyday, Johnny Hallyday, Johnny, 39–41, 82–83, 121–122 Hallyday, Joy. See Hallyday, Johnny Hallyday, Laeticia. See Hallyday, Johnny hearing: conciliation, 180; at court, 155, 158, 169, 175–176, 178, 186–188, 191–206. See also Court of Appeals; divorce; f­ amily court; judges; judiciary heirs, 16, 89; designated, 41, 47–49, 115; favored, 50, 110, 120, 182; ­f uture, 26; legitimate, 58, 135, 139; male, 44, 46, 105–108, 110, 118, 185, 219; rightful, 120–124, 132; single, 115–117. See also birth order; ­daughters; inheritance; reserved portion; sons Herlin-­Giret, Camille, 152, 227, 228t heteronormativity, ix, xiv, 33, 215–216 hierarchy: business, 78; judiciary, 158, 172; socioeconomic, 5, 42, 152 Hollande, François, 137

322  INDEX home: conjugal, 146; ­family, 35, 54, 76, 109, 114, 167, 191; foster, 187; history, 18; inheritance, x, 28; marital, 109, 111, 122, 127–131, 149–150, 179–185, 255–256, 256t; owner­ship, 4, 21–25, 32, 48–51, 62–68, 75, 99t, 158; retirement, 68, 72–74, 77; sale, 58; schooling, 3; secondary, ix, 29, 54, 57–59, 78, 117, 257t. See also homemaking and homemakers; real estate homemaking and homemakers, 2, 6, 8, 14, 36, 173, 219. See also domestic ­labor; domestic ­mental load; ­house­work; reproductive ­labor; unpaid ­labor house. See home; housing; primary residence; real estate; rent; residence house­hold: accounts, 36, 192; expenses, 36, 161, 174, 200–201; person of reference, 239–240, 287n13; resources, 198; statistic general issues, 29, 35, 68, 200, 236; two-­ parent ­house­hold, 36; workforce, 34. See also asset: ­house­hold asset data; house­ holding; ­house­hold production; single­parent ­house­holds house­holding, 35 house­hold production, 5–7, 32–35, 127, 219. See also domestic ­labor; homemaking and homemakers; ­house­work; reproductive ­labor; single-­parent ­house­hold; unpaid ­labor house­work, 7, 14, 56, 113, 173–174, 197, 215. ­ ental See also domestic ­labor; domestic m load; Global W ­ omen’s Strike; homemaking and homemakers; h ­ ouse­hold production; International Wages for House­work Campaign; reproductive ­labor; unpaid ­labor housing, 4, 21, 23, 28; as asset, 9, 67t, 115, 136, 226, 229–230, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; bud­get, 23, 151, 191, 194; ­couple’s, 62, 185; excluding usufruct, 52t; ­free, 136–138, 187; in­equality, ix, 128; issues, 146, 187, 190–191; owner-­occupied, 22; policies, 128, 190; public, 21–22, 25, 61, 64, 65–66, 91, 190. See also aid: housing; benefits: housing assistance; costs: housing; home; market: housing;

price: of housing; primary residence; property: housing; real estate; rent; residence husband. See ex-­husband; marriage immigrants, 25, 35, 282n10. See also migration impoverishment: planning, 147, 203–204; ­a fter separation, 6, 32, 175, 205, 218; of ­women, 70, 220–221. See also poverty income: available monthly, 148–151; in the calculation of child support, 194–203, 209; in the calculation of compensatory allowance, 160, 163, 165, 167, 176–177; class in­equality, 4, 23; conjugal power, 35, 59; control of bud­get, 36; distribution, 163, 189; gender in­equality, ix, xi, 8, 60, 68, 103, 189; management, 37; national, 6; replacement, 163; ­a fter separation, 30–32, 180–185, 219; taxable, 30; tax declaration, 93, 154. See also gender: income gap; resources; solidarity: active solidarity income; wages in­de­pen­dence: financial, 65, 173–174, 193, 206; professional, 45, 75, 146. See also self-­employment individuals, 3, 20, 23, 28, 44, 76, 141, 216; individual autonomy, 28, 108; individual data, 9–10, 229–230, 232–234; individ­ ualization, 64–66, 218; individual owner­ ship, 9, 52, 55, 60, 65, 128, 149, 229–230; individual social trajectories, 8, 19, 21, 42, 221, 236; wealth, 10, 29–30, 55, 213. See also meritocracy indivision, 61, 111, 115–116, 129t, 142, 146–147, 242, 256t–257t industry, 5–6, 20, 45, 71, 115, 153, 163. See also business; socioprofessional categories inheritance: cash, 64, 75; cultural, 20, 217; data, 225–226, 231–235; declaration of succession, 88, 134, 138; disinherited, 26, 40–41; distribution, 51, 77; economic, x; egalitarian, 11, 17, 40–41, 105, 107, 118; end of, 18; ­family ­matter, 26; ­future, 37; inherited assets, 54, 65, 107, 125, 130, 149, 164; inheritors, 19–20; law, 82, 108, 110, 139; notaires and, 76, 87, 90; order of, 122;

INDEX  323 rights to, 116, 118; between spouses, 108, 121–124; taxation, 16, 37, 97, 137–140, 147; type of, 50–52; as a type of economic arrangement, 10, 22, 113; weight of, x, 18, 23–24, 37, 54. See also ­under age; appropriation; b­ rothers; conflict; ­daughters; discrimination; distribution; f­ athers; gifts; home; liquidation; m ­ others; property; siblings; s­ isters; sons; transfer; wealth; working classes interest: common, 87, 142, 156; economic, 103–104, 112, 126, 169; finance, 4, 94; interest-­free loan, 10, 27; ­legal, 40, 83–84, 181, 205; professional, 88; public finance, 152; rate, 24, 64; tax, 134, 138–143, 147–148, 158, 219. See also child: best interest of; conflict: of interests; disinterestedness intergenerational giving, 97 International Wages for House­work Campaign, 215 inter vivos distributions, 42, 84, 117 inventory, 109–114, 117, 124, 131, 138–139, 176–177, 183, 219. See also assets; estate; property; wealth Islamic ­legal tradition, 105, 290n2 Italy, 7, 22, 45, 137, 168 judges, 14, 80–81, 85, 101–103, 142, 219–220. See also child support; compensatory allowance; Court of Appeals; divorce; ­family court; family-­law professionals; hearing; judiciary; l­egal professionals judiciary, feminization of, 288n17, 295n4 Kabylia, 19, 216 kinship, xiv, 32, 41, 89, 122, 239; ­legal, 74; network, 233; practical, 74 ­labor, 5; commodified, 215; force, 5, 7; fruits of, 195; invisible, 33; market, 8–9, 22, 56–60, 66, 70, 168, 189; parental, 174, 296n9; power, 212; voluntary, 113; wage, 216. See also domestic ­labor; exploitation; ­house­work; recognition; reproductive ­labor; sexual division of ­labor; unpaid ­labor; work

laborers, 27, 48, 78, 98, 192, 237, 262 Lamy, Stéphanie. See ­Family Abandonment–­ Zero Tolerance land, 19, 28–30, 48–52, 63, 86, 98, 110–117, 125, 128, 129t, 134–135. See also assets; farms and farmers; professional assets; wealth Latin Amer­i­c a, 23, 106 law, x, xii, 12, 29, 31, 54; application of, 75, 148, 161; California, 39; confrontation with, 74, 172, 206, 213, 220–221; customary, 40; formally egalitarian, xi, xiii, 106, 116, 219–220; French, xiii, 40, 102, 166; gender-­neutral, 108; ­legal language, 13, 89, 94, 131; Muslim, 105; negotiated, 82–83; in practice, 108; private, 81, 118; private international, 101–103; shadow of, 74, 82–85, 100, 134, 156; spirit of, 84, 127; vagueness of, 164. See also Civil Code: default laws; collaborative law; common law; default: laws; family-­law professionals; inheritance: law; ­legal professionals; property: law; socialization: in the law; tax: law Law of 3 December 2001, 98, 105, 122 Law of 9 July 2010, 184 Law of 13 July 1965, 107–108 Law of 23 June 2006, 115, 118, 123 Law of 23 December 1985, 108 Law of 30 June 2000, 161–162 ­lawyers, xiii, 12, 37, 76, 88, 103, 131–132, 219; Bar, 76, 90, 91, 100, 124, 141, 154, 204; consultations, 91–92; ­f amily, 95, 157, 179, 204; fees, 76, 91–94, 100, 102–103, 176; feminization of, 90, 124; Halliday’s case, 39; ju­nior, 94, 153, 198; ­legal team, 6; local, 81, 148; number of, 6, 82, 91; personal, 81; practicing collaborative law, 100; specialized in ­f amily law, 95, 124–125, 197; star, 121–122, 157; strategy, 94, 139, 147, 178. See also family-­law professionals; ­legal or informal tools; ­legal professionals; market: ­legal; office; tax: ­lawyer ­legal aid, 73, 76, 91–95, 100, 102–103, 155, 166. See also clients

324  INDEX ­legal or informal tools, 77, 109, 116, 123, 162–163, 178, 219; instrument, 110, 131, 156, 184; sophisticated, 86, 97, 103, 153; techniques, 110, 116, 120, 131. See also ­lawyers; notaires; reversed accounting; valuation ­legal professionals, xiii–­x iv, 110, 114, 124, 184, 198, 214, 219; access to, 74–77, 80; complicity or distrust with, 82, 89, 154, 220–221; network, 96, 154; offices, x, 82–85, 134; practice and tools, 103, 131; tax administration, 139–140, 143, 148, 155–156; unequal investment, 12, 74–77, 92, 104, 221. See also family-­law professionals; judges; ­lawyers; notaires ­legal scholarship and scholars, ix, xiii, 17, 110, 118, 283n26 legitimization: of the class structure, 19; of the gender order, 13, 199, 201; of in­equality, xiii, 219–220; of sexist arrangements, 106, 113–114, 131–132, 148, 198–199 Levavasseur, Ingrid, 1–2, 4–5 LGBTQI+ ­people, xiv, 216 liabilities, 109, 124 life expectancy, 66, 68, 107–108, 162 “limitation of gift” mea­sure, 97, 123–124 lineage, 63, 78, 80, 89, 135 liquidation, 131, 164; indivision, 111–112, 147; inheritance, 95, 111–112, 124, 131; of marital property, 12, 75–76, 81–84, 109, 124–125, 141, 176–185, 254–255; of the matrimonial regime, 112, 130, 160, 176, 260. See also community property; marital regime; marriage loans, 36, 58, 64, 69, 87, 146, 149, 180–183; credit, 22, 36, 188; debts, 10, 58, 127, 131, 164, 178, 96; guarantor for, 5, 14, 22; interest-­free, 10, 27. See also banks lone-­parent ­house­hold. See single-­parent ­house­holds love, xiii–­x iv, 19, 33, 171; filial, 18, 40–41; parental, 41, 133; of work, 16. See also emotions; feelings Macron, Emmanuel, 30; “Macron Law,” 90 Maghreb, 119. See also Algeria; Morocco; North Africa; Tunisia

Mali and Malians, 187 management: bud­get, 1, 36–37, 210–211, 220; business, 19–20, 45, 82; estate, 41, 88, 114, 121, 134; wealth management professionals, 12, 75, 88, 92–95, 141–143, 152–153, 213, 219. See also assets: management of; wealth: management of Marchand, Michèle, 122 Marcus, George, 88 marital property. See community property; liquidation; marital regime marital regime, 60–61, 78–81, 99t, 107, 241–242, 243t, 244t–247t; change of, 121–122, 170–171, 241–244; community of assets acquired ­a fter marriage, 60, 64–65, 79, 80, 125, 170, 177, 242, 243t, 246t–247t, 249t–251t; separation of property, xii, 61, 64–65, 78–80, 97, 107, 111, 130, 147, 170, 230, 241–242, 243t, 244, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; universal community, 60, 79t, 243t. See also community property; contracts: marital; default: marital regime; marriage market, 5, 30–37, 110–112; asset management, 75; financial, 3–4; housing, 131, 183, 190; ­legal, 86, 90, 94–95, 100; matrimonial, 59; value, 49, 111–112. See also ­labor: market marriage, xii, 19, 30, 42, 60, 64, 74, 77, 101, 285nn39–40; length of, xi, 3, 122, 130, 159, 162; marriage-­like relationships, xi, xiii, 33–34, 189, 209; married and unmarried, 53, 105, 242, 244t–247t, 248–253; multiple marriages, 40, 122, 135–137, 169, 175; tax issues of, 25. See ­ nions; conjugal separation; also civil u contracts; divorce; gift to the survivor; marital regime; name Marx, Karl, 5, 34, 212, 215; capital, xi Marxist feminists, xi, 5, 32, 33–34, 214 materialist feminists, xi, 5, 32, 33, 214–215 maternity leave, 63, 165 matrimonial regime. See marital regime meritocracy, 50; individual merit, 17, 19–20 Michel, Louise, 211 microfinance sector, 36 ­middle classes, 14–15, 220; cultural pole, 174;

INDEX  325 facing l­egal professionals, 91, 221; facing tax administration, 151–152; ­fathers, 209; historical transformation, 20, 49; propertied fractions of, 84; separating ­couples, 202; wage-­earning, 28; ­women, 36, 185, 209 ­Middle East, 23 migration: international, xiv; national, 115, 223. See also immigrants Ministry of Justice, 76, 162, 199, 205, 210, 252–253 mobility: ­career, 158; social, 23, 233; upward strategies, 25, 38. See also ­c areer money, 1–2, 11, 35–37, 185; in f­ amily case studies, 48–52, 55–57, 63–65, 110, 133–138; monetary transfers, 51, 235t. See also appraisal; estimation; valuation Morocco and Moroccans, 25, 119, 198, 290n2. See also Maghreb; North Africa Morrison, Toni, 2 ­mothers: employment of, 168; in f­ amily case studies, 47–49, 57–58, 63, 69, 71–75, 113; inheritance, 105, 134–139; ­mother’s ­f amily name, 53–54; norms, 132, 196–197; poverty, 189–191, 210–211, 300n5; power of, 36. See also child physical custody; child support; parenting; parents name, 52–54, 283n22; ­a fter divorce, 191; ­family, 68; maiden, 53, 121–122 naturalization, 156 needs: of ­children, 2, 69, 196, 200, 209; of ­family, 201, 220; of (ex-)spouse, 160, 184, 194; of ­widows, 97 negotiation: of a compensatory allowance, 76; divorce, 156, 176, 179, 181–184; economic arrangements, 82, 88, 113, 115–116, 149, 164, 175, 219; ­family peace, 134; ­legal professionals, 83–85, 101, 141, 147, 256; liquidation of marital property, 125 Netherlands, 7 net worth, 9, 30, 142–143, 147, 166, 169, 213, 225–227, 228t nineteenth ­century, 6, 17–18, 106–107, 172, 211, 215, 282n10 North Africa, 23, 94, 119

North Amer­i­c a, 6; ­legal practices, 53, 175, 302n26; poverty, 189–191; time-­use studies, 7; wealth in­equality, 23–24. See also Canada; United States notaires, xiii–­x iv, 12, 37, 75–76, 87, 131–132, 158, 219; asset doctors, 82–83; Congress of Notaires, 122; departmental chamber of notaires, 112; divorce agreements, 175–176; fees, 76, 81, 85, 88, 140, 143–144; feminization of, 89–90; High Council of Notaires, 105; impartiality or partiality, 81–82; Pa­ri­sian, 86, 96; separation of assets, 78, 97; status, 89; taxes, 140–145; website, 120; ­widows, 121–124. See also business: notaires’; ­family business: notaires and; family-­law professionals; inheritance: notaires and; ­legal or informal tools; l­egal professionals; office; owner­ship: notaires’ practice; transfer: notaires’ practices OECD, 8, 22, 200 Oesterlund, Robert. See Pursglove, Sarah office: closed doors, 81, 83, 131, 134, 145, 175, 219; examples of ­lawyers’, 71–72, 95, 124–127, 145–148; examples of notaires’, 86–87, 96, 105, 119, 140–141, 143–145; judge’s, 85, 102, 186; law, 71–72, 75, 83–84, 91, 93, 101; ­lawyers’ and notaires’, 37, 113–114, 219; ­legal, 12, 85, 143, 145, 148, 156; visit to the l­awyer’s, 71–72, 124–127; visit to the notaire’s, 42, 49, 75–76, 85, 111–113, 124, 176; See also ­family benefits: offices; l­egal professionals owner­ship, xi, 30, 116, 154, 219; bare, 133, 170; business, 45–47, 51, 126, 233, 250t, 262; full, 98, 122, 130–131; joint, 9, 29, 57, 107, 146; notaires’ practice, 89–90; percentage, 61, 64, 150; real estate, 25, 67t, 78, 80, 107, 146; rights, 59, 156; use without, 98. See also home: owner­ship; primary residence: owner­ship; property: owner­ship Panama Papers scandal. See Pursglove, Sarah parental leave, 63, 155, 173 parenting, 7, 62, 196; co-­parenting, 4, 197, 302

326  INDEX parents: aged, 10, 113, 286n3; business-­ owning, 27, 45–46, 87, 116–117; custodial, 200–201, 207, 210, 301n15; education, ix, 35, 44, 194–195, 233; financial help, 24; in the narrative of the modern ­family, 17, 20–21; unmarried, 261, 293n36. See also care; child physical custody; child support; death; education; ­family strategies of social reproduction; ­fathers; gifts; grandparents; inheritance; ­mothers; parenting; single-­parent ­house­holds partition. See estate; property; tax partners: business, 8; intimate relationship, 3, 10, 31, 35–36, 54–56, 59–60, 64–67, 174, 182–185, 188–189; of judges, 173; in notarial businesses, 86–87, 89–90, 96, 105, 115, 119, 144. See also business; ex-­partners; ­family business; judges; notaires part-­time jobs, x, 2, 47, 57–59, 148, 150, 153, 167, 185, 188 Passeron, Jean-­Claude, 19, 42 patriarchy, xii, 29, 68, 108, 120, 215 patrimony, 52, 283n22. See also assets; estate; inheritance; transfer; wealth philanthropy, 16, 26 Piketty, Thomas, x–xi, 4, 10, 18, 23–24, 31, 213; capital, xi Pinay, Antoine, 137 portfolio, 114, 117, 121. See also assets Portugal and Portuguese, 25, 94, 137 possession and dispossession, 20, 51, 107, 119, 140, 182, 226 poverty, 5; line, 8, 163, 188, 190; policy, 21, 36; of single-­parent families, 2, 189, 191; of ­women, 75, 220. See also impoverishment power, 51, 84, 176, 209, 212–215; economic, xii, 6, 17, 35–36, 56–59, 107, 179–181; of the ­father, 41. See also assets: control of; control; patriarchy; wealth: control of prenuptial agreements, 12, 60, 64–65, 95. See also contract; marital regime preservation: of ­family real estate holdings, 136, 293n30; of men’s position in business, 131; of wealth, 87. See also assets;

f­ amily strategies of social reproduction; property; social status; wealth price, 111–112; of breaking up, 163, 220; of education, 5; of housing, 57, 63, 146; of notarial practice, 288n23. See also costs; market primary residence: c­ ouples’, 29, 54–55, 64, 98–99; divorce, 129t, 130, 146, 183, 255–256, 256t–257t; marriage, 79t, 243t, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; marital breakdown, 221, 254–257, 256t, 257t; owner­ ship, 22–23, 29, 30, 54–55, 66, 67t, 107; rent, 150; size, ix; succession, 98–99; ­w idows’, 66, 98, 123. See also home; housing; rent; residence primogeniture, 18, 105. See also sons privacy: exposure of, 210; of ­family arrangements, 34, 60, 70, 75, 100; ­legal professionals’ offices, 84–85, 113; studying ­family life, xiii, 10–12 private ordering, 12, 175 privilege, 20, 43, 50, 80 production, 5, 32–35, 37; of arrangements, 106, 114, 219; of complexity, 92; of ignorance, 153; of in­equality, 10, 23; national, 6. See also ­house­hold production; wealth: production professional assets, 9, 78, 89, 92, 97, 104, 114, 221; data, 225–226, 230, 262; in succession, 45, 50, 52t, 105, 116–117, 120; taxation, 138; valuation, 110, 116–117 propertied classes, 84, 92–94, 97, 104, 148, 154, 175, 213, 217 property, xi, 87, 109–110, 113, 132, 152, 156, 226; conjugal, 14, 254; exclusive, 54, 55t, 64, 80; housing, 55, 57, 61, 93, 130–131, 149; inheritance, 18, 27–28, 106, 113, 120, 164, 218; jointly owned property, 10, 56, 144, 257t; law, 13, 40, 75–77, 81, 106, 120, 213, 219–220; marital, 80, 175–176; money and, 11, 16, 17; owner­ship, 25, 63, 65, 66, 75, 84, 86, 93, 101, 145, 170; par­ tition, 115, 120, 178, 254, 255; personal, 129t, 255, 256t; preferential attribution, 114, 135, 138; preservation, 123, 165; professional, 92, 104, 114, 120, 138, 225, 262; real estate, 92, 98, 104; rights, 6, 111, 131;

INDEX  327 sale of, 12, 57, 98, 111, 115, 140, 143, 164; tax, 25, 107; transfer fees, 75, 142. See also appropriation: of property; calculation: property; community property; distribution: of property; estimation; liquidation: of marital property public housing. See housing: public Pursglove, Sarah, 153 Quebec, 152, 209, 301n13, 305n14. See also Canada queer studies, 214, 216. See also gender: studies; LGBTQI+ ­people RAAR. See anticipated relinquishing of share in reduction real estate, 37, 55t, 77, 104, 117, 217, 225, 230; assets, 25, 70, 80, 99t, 115, 127; capital, 30; civil real estate com­pany, 80, 124, 146–147, 169, 177; divorce, 82, 128–129, 169–170, 255–256, 256t, 257t; holdings, 121, 134, 136, 154; investment, 217; marriage, 107, 244t–247t, 249t–251t; piece of, 51, 77, 124; professionals, xi, 16, 37, 48, 57, 81, 111–112, 177; sale of, 75, 85, 111, 141–142; strategies of ­family, 11; succession, 42, 51, 77, 133; taxation, 75, 77, 141; types of, 54, 55t, 96, 244t–247t, 249t–251t. See also estimation; owner­ ship; property: real estate; rent; valuation recipients: child support, 150–152; gifts and inheritance, 26–27, 109; ­legal aid, 100; welfare, 187, 195, 208, 301n13. See also child support; donors; f­ amily benefits; gifts; inheritance; l­egal aid; welfare recognition: benefits, 159; financial, 6, 64, 113, 161; ­labor, 33, 110, 161, 165. See also birth reimbursements to community property. See community property relatives, 11–12, 29, 35, 42, 74–75, 110–114, 132–134, 278n56; Relatives and Parents Survey, 233. See also ­family; kinship renonciation anticipée à l’action en réduction. See anticipated relinquishing of share in reduction

rent, 61, 69, 149–150, 154, 180–181, 188, 190, 194; rental apartments, 69, 123; rental income, 149; rental properties, 78, 117, 128–129, 135–136, 154, 177, 257t; rented real estate, 55t, 93; renters, 1, 2, 65, 77 reproduction. See Bourdieu, Pierre; ­family strategies of social reproduction reproductive ­labor, 6, 33, 130. See also domestic ­labor; ­house­hold production; unpaid ­labor reserved portion, 105, 109, 119; heir with reserved share, 40, 107, 118–119, 121, 123 residence, 184; ­children’s, 151, 196, 198; place of, 21, 95–96, 101; secondary, 30, 55t, 79t, 226, 243t; tax, 149–150. See also home; housing; primary residence; real estate; rent resources: in the calculation of child support, 194, 201; cultural, 14, 82, 100, 138, 217; in the designation of the person of ref­ erence, 231, 240; economic, 35–36, 44, 72, 74, 77, 94, 108; financial, 148, 149t, 156, 286n2; informational, 156; ­a fter separation, 163, 188–189, 198, 199, 211; symbolic, 14. See also cultural capital; economic capital retirement, 117, 144, 185; home, 66, 68, 72–74, 77; pensions, 2, 8, 9, 32, 68, 91, 160, 163; retirees, 74, 91, 226, 237–238, 262. See also benefits: surviving spouse; ­widows reversed accounting, 108–132, 164–165, 184, 201, 219. See also accounting; compensatory allowance; estimation; valuation; wealth rights. See estate: ­widows’ rights on; f­ athers’ rights organ­ization; inheritance: rights to; owner­ship: rights; property: rights; visitation rights Romania, 22 Salic Law, 47, 49, 283n17 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 137 Savage, Mike, x–xi, 217 savings, 32, 36, 56, 73, 98, 138, 180–183, 213 Scandinavian countries, 23. See also Sweden Schiappa, Marlène, 207

328  INDEX Scotland, 106. See also United Kingdom Scott, MacKenzie, 2, 4–6; divorce, 3–4, 114, 127 securities, 52t, 79t, 99t, 243t, 246t–247t self-­employment, 22, 45, 65, 76–79, 87, 174, 179, 215; in statistical surveys, 226, 233, 236, 238t, 262. See also business; ­family business; in­de­pen­dence: professional; professional assets Senegal, 290n2 separation of assets. See marital regime separation of property. See marital regime ser­vice: community ser­vice jobs, 55, 61; provided by ­legal professionals, 74, 76, 95–97, 103, 140, 143–145; sector, 1, 6, 8, 22, 35, 45; social ser­vices, 25, 29, 33, 168, 185, 207, 220. See also ­legal professionals; welfare settlement: divorce, 37, 98, 124, 147, 162, 176, 180; estate, 11, 14, 40, 109, 112, 118; mari­ tal home, 127, 131 sex categories, xiv, 17, 45–46, 50, 52t, 193t, 218, 232–235, 253, 261 sexism, 14; accounting, 13, 184, 219; ­family arrangements, 106; ­legal practices, 89–90, 132, 167, 191, 197, 200; tax, 151–152 sexual division of ­labor, 29, 163, 167, 174, 218 sexuality, xiv, 19, 34, 209–210, 216. See also vio­lence siblings: in ­family businesses, 43–46, 116; in­equality among, 231–233; inheritance, 29, 41, 54, 69, 109, 117, 130, 134–139, 185; number of, 66, 226 single-­parent ­house­holds, xi, 2, 8, 189–191, 205, 210–211, 240 ­sisters: in f­ amily wealth arrangements, 82, 84, 153, 156, 219; inheritance, xiii, 10–11, 42–49, 54–57, 68–69, 107, 133–139, 177, 218; number of, 232, 234–235. See also ­brothers; siblings Smet, Laura. See Hallyday, Johnny Socialist Party, 137, 161 socialization, 11, 45–46, 59, 62, 84; in the law, 74, 77–78, 154, 221 social security, 22, 155, 210, 280n84 social status, 20, 38, 42, 44, 50, 84, 135, 212,

217–219. See also Bourdieu, Pierre; ­family strategies of social reproduction société civile immobilière. See real estate: civil real estate com­pany sociology and sociologists, xi, 10, 18, 25, 29, 45, 68, 184, 208, 215–216; economic, xiv, 35, 215; of the ­family, xiii, 20, 33–34, 41, 214–215; of ­family businesses, 215; feminist, 214; of in­equality, 12, 212–213; materialist, 32; quantitative, 233; sociolegal scholars, xiii–­x iv, 12, 74 socioprofessional categories, 28, 66, 67t, 79t, 99t, 193t, 236–237, 238t, 243t, 247t, 261, 287n13 solidarity: active solidarity income, 155, 209; in debts, 127; domestic, 18; ­family, 21, 105; maintenance, 159; wealth tax, 96 sons: divorce, 166, 169, 187–188; education, 5; eldest, 18–19, 46, 58, 62, 72, 133; fam­ ily business, 29, 42–46, 47, 84, 87–88, 105, 117; favorite, 44, 47–49, 54, 56; firstborn, 51–52, 52t, 235t; inheritance, 40, 63–64, 68, 105–106, 113–114, 124, 134–139, 217–218; in media, 120–122; only, 46, 51–52, 52t, 111; transmission, x, 16–17 Spain and the Spanish, 22, 85 spouse. See benefits: surviving spouse; ex-­spouses; marriage squandering, 20, 41 standard of living, 5, 21, 31–32, 116–117, 150, 159, 163, 185, 189–194, 200, 300n6 stocks, 4, 10, 30, 37, 78, 110, 114, 117, 226. See also assets: financial; bonds structuring assets. See assets surviving spouse benefits. See benefits Sweden, 7, 137, 168 Switzerland, 22, 161 tax: arrangements, 14–16; avoidance, 14, 156; fiscal law, xiv, 12, 76, 111, 142–143; fraud, 153; law, 26, 145, 156; ­lawyers, 141–142, 147, 152, 219; optimization, 81, 112, 134, 139–141, 144–148, 150, 153, 156–158; partition, 37, 75, 141, 144–147, 255; rates, 26. See also accounting; calculation; child

INDEX  329 support; costs; estate; fortune; income; interest; l­egal professionals: marriage; property: tax; solidarity: wealth tax; transfer ­t hings: material, 18, 145; that must be kept, 50–51, 185. See also assets; wealth time, 14; procedural timing, 179, 184, 256, 260; time frame of economic arrangements, 5, 180–185; time-­use studies, 7–8, 168. See also part-­time jobs Tocqueville, Alexis de, 18, 40–41 trade, 6, 21–22, 45–46, 78–80, 115, 202–203, 237–238, 262, 292n16 transfer: asset, 17, 27, 41, 115, 118, 130; cultural capital, 20, 217, 220; data, 225, 229, 231–235; direct-­line, 137; economic capital, 4, 19, 50, 124, 216; outside the f­ amily, 26; within the ­family, x, xiv, 5, 13, 17, 26, 87, 212; ­family economic, 11, 17, 19, 21, 132, 217–218; of ­family wealth, xiv, 14, 65, 68, 70; farm, 105, 116–117; imbalanced, 119; along the male line, 120, 165; name, 53–54; notaires’ practices, 76, 105; patrimony, 52, 283n22; professional assets, 45; real estate, 80, 146; self-­employment, 45; skills, 45; social status, 20, 38, 41; taxation, 137–138, 147; vineyard, 116–117; wealth, 20, 26–28, 41, 47, 49, 66, 140. See also birth order; ­daughters; estate: transfers; f­ amily business: transfer; money: monetary transfers; property: transfer fees; sons Trump, Donald, 15–17 trust: assured reliance, 11, 35, 88, 92, 142, 220; distrust, 64, 122–124, 144, 154; ­legal agreement, 22, 82, 106, 153. See also clients; l­egal professionals Tunisia and Tunisians, 25, 290n2. See also Maghreb; North Africa twentieth ­century, 6, 18–22, 41, 49, 59, 88, 98, 115, 212 twenty-­first ­century, x–xi, 4, 10, 14, 24, 116, 161, 211–213 unemployment, 2, 62, 135, 165, 177, 198, 210 United Kingdom: home owner­ship, 22;

­house­hold production, 7; ­legal practices, 106–107, 288n17, 307n25; life expectancy, 66; wealth in­equality, 213; welfare, 303n42. See also ­England, ­women and conjugal homes; Scotland; Wales, w ­ omen and conjugal homes United States, 15–17, 39–40, 82, 147; divorce rate, 64, 285n39; gender and feminist studies, 214, 216, 307n26; home owner­ship, 22; ­house­hold production, 7; inheritance, 18, 26, 137; ­labor market, 59, 168; ­legal practices, 106–107, 288n17, 307n25; life expectancy, 66; living a­ fter separation, 31; philanthropy, 26; poverty, 36, 300n5; public education, 21; racial wealth in­equality, 13; surnames, 284n26; time-­use studies, 7, 168; vio­lence, 184, 299n37; wealth in­equal­ ity, 23–24, 213; welfare, 210, 301n13. See also North Amer­i­ca unmarried ­couples. See cohabiting relationship; marriage unpaid ­labor, 5–6, 14, 33, 43–44, 58, 60, 127, 165–167, 169, 180, 199, 219–220 upper classes, 34, 84, 94; cultural pole, 98, 173–174; economic pole, 78, 172; facing administrations, 143, 151–152, 209; facing ­legal professionals, 91, 98, 104, 221; ­family aid, 27–28; gender wealth gap, 10; historical transformation, 20, 49. See also bourgeoisie; propertied classes; wealthier classes US Census Bureau, 210, 301n15 usufruct, 50, 52t, 98, 122, 124, 170. See also owner­ship: use without valuation, 10, 13, 17, 109–113, 115–117, 131; undervaluation, 110–112, 116–117, 145, 214. See also accounting; assets; estimation; inventory; wealth: evaluation Vartan, Sylvie. See Hallyday, Johnny vio­lence: conjugal, 93, 299n35; domestic, ix, 183–184, 198, 207, 253; sexual, 184, 299n37; symbolic, 192; against ­women, x, 208, 216 visitation rights, 188, 192, 198–200. See also divorce

330  INDEX wages: deferred, 110, 113, 116, 291n11; discrimination, 8, 56; earners, 21, 28, 32, 36; employment, 2, 4, 17–18, 22–23, 47, 212, 271n10; garnishing, 205, 207; insecurity, 210; judges’, 158; ­labor, 5, 216; national minimum wage, 195; notarial positions, 90. See also income; International Wages for House­work Campaign Wales, w ­ omen and conjugal homes, 128. See also United Kingdom wealth, xi; available or disposable, 92, 163, 165–166, 175, 184–185; circulation, xii, xiv, 10, 13, 17, 35, 76–77, 113; composition and volume, 80, 103–104; concentration, 85, 95, 101; control of, 10, 13, 17–18, 35–37, 61, 213, 221; distribution, xii, 4, 23–24, 29, 83, 114, 124, 213; evaluation, 13, 37, 124, 226; ­family, xii, 5, 14, 21, 37, 41, 121–123, 221; in­equality, xiv, 4, 10, 13, 18, 59, 157, 212–213, 219; inherited, x, 19, 23–24, 27; internationalized, 101; management of, 10, 152–153, 156; men’s, 29, 148, 152, 214; national, 6, 18, 23; preservation, 12, 87, 123, 136; private, 23; production, 5, 13–14, 17, 33, 34, 37; statistical data, x, 9, 25, 28–31, 213; symbolic, 20; ­women’s, 29, 39, 214. See also appropriation; assets; estate; estimation; f­ amily wealth arrangements; French Wealth Survey; individuals: wealth; inventory; net worth, property; transfer; valuation wealthier classes, 24, 30, 92, 104. See also bourgeoisie; propertied classes; upper classes

wealth man­a g­ers. See management Weber, Florence, 35, 74, 204 welfare, 71, 92, 155, 163, 179, 188–189, 195–196, 221; case, 54; state, xi, 21, 26, 29, 187, 191, 209–211, 213–214 ­widows, xii, 66–70, 89, 97–98, 106–108, 123–124, 132, 159, 286n3, 293n30; Hallyday’s, 40, 121–122; in f­ amily case studies, 42, 49 wife. See ex-­wife; marriage ­wills, xii, 12, 18, 35, 88, 106, 115, 133–136; Hallyday’s ­will, 39–41, 121–122 work: professional, 8, 167; under­ground, 155; unreported, 155, 166. See also domestic ­labor; ­house­work; ­labor: market; workers workers: domestic, 48; essential, ix, 33 working classes, 19–22, 189, 213; facing legal professionals, 77, 91–94, 101–104, 155; ­family aid, 28, 74; ­fathers, 192, 195; gender wealth gap, 30; ­house­holds, 201; inheritance, 27; men, 193, 209–210; ­mothers, 191; propertied fractions of, 154; separating ­couples, 202, 220; ­women, 6, 14, 185, 189, 192, 210, 286n3 World War I, 18 World War II, 200, 216 world wars, 23 writings: confidential, 142; ­legal documents, 75, 89, 94, 103, 120 Yellow Vests. See Gilets Jaunes Zarca, Bernard, 45, 233 Zelizer, Viviana, 74; intimate transactions, 11, 35; relational work, 35