Legal Documents (legal + document)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Last Will and Testament in Literature: Rupture, Rivalry, and Sometimes Rapprochement from Middlemarch to Lemony Snicket

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2008
ELIZABETH STONE
Although the psychological literature on the last will and testament is sparse, authors of fiction and memoir have filled the gap, writing in rich detail about the impact of wills on families. Henry James, George Eliot, J. R. Ackerley, and others reveal that a will is not only a legal document but a microcosm of family life: a coded and nonnegotiable message from the will's writer to its intended readers, the heirs, delivered at a stressful time and driving home the truth that options for discussion between testator and heirs are now gone, all factors which may intensify the ambivalence of grief and stall its resolution. Among the problems the authors chronicle: reinvigorated sibling rivalries, vindictive testators, and the revelation of traumatic family secrets. Writers also demonstrate how contemporary social factors, such as divorce, second families, and geographic distance between family members, may complicate wills and ensuing family relations. Exemplary wills, or will-like documents, appear in fiction by Maria Katzenbach and Marilynne Robinson, allowing the living to make rapprochements with the dead, and pointing to testamentary strategies clinicians might develop to lead to a resolution of grief. The depth of these writers' accounts allows clinicians to imagine points at which they might productively intervene in matters pertaining to a will. RESUMEN Aunque la literatura psicológica sobre la última voluntad y el testamento es escasa, los autores de ficción y de memorias han llenado ese vación, escribiendo en rico detalle sobre el impacto de los testamentos en las familias. Henry James, George Eliot, J.R. Ackerley y otros, revelan que un testamento no es sólo un documento legal, sino un microcosmos de vida familiar: un mensaje codificado y no negociable de la voluntad de quien lo escribe a sus destinatarios, los herederos, enviado en un momento estresante y haciendo obvio el hecho de que las posibilidades de discutir entre el emisor y sus herederos ya no existen. Todos estos factores pueden aumentar la ambivalencia de la pena y demorar su resolución. Entre todos los problemas, los autores relatan: aumento de la rivalidad entre hermanos, testamentos vengativos, y la revelación de secretos de familia traumáticos. Los autores también demuestran cómo los factores sociales contemporáneos, como el divorcio, segundas familias y la distancia geográfica entre miembros de la familia, pueden complicar los testamentos y las relaciones familiares posteriores. Testamentos ejemplarizantes, o documentos con aspecto de testamento, aparecen en los trabajos de ficción de Maria Katzenbach y Marilynne Robinson, permitiendo a los vivos acercarse a los muertos, y señalando estrategias testamentarias que los profesionales de clínica pueden desarrollar con el fin de acabar con la pena. La profundidad de los relatos de estos autores permite a los profesionales de clínica imaginarse puntos en que pueden intervenir de una forma productiva en temas relacionados con testamentos. Palabras clave: última voluntad y testamento, muerte, secretos, Henry James, George Eliot, Marilynne Robinson, J.R. Ackerley, Dorothy Gallagher, Maria Katzenbach [source]


Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Origins of the Civil War

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2007
Nicole Etcheson
Author's Introduction The author argues that slavery is the root cause of the Civil War even though historians have often posited other explanations. Some other interpretations have been ideological (i.e., about the morality of slavery), others have been economic, political, or cultural. Focus Questions 1If you were to make an argument for the causes of the Civil War, what evidence or types of evidence would you want to examine? 2In what ways can the different types of arguments (ideological, economic, political, and cultural), be combined to explain the causes of the Civil War? Do such arguments exclude or reinforce each other? In what ways? Author Recommends * E. L. Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859,1863 (New York, NY: Norton, 2003). A study of two counties, one north and one south, during the end of the sectional crisis and the early Civil War. While Potter, Walther, and Wilentz offer sweeping, often political, histories, Ayres offers a microhistory approach to the sectional conflict. Although Ayres writes within the tradition of seeing cultural differences between North and South, he concludes that slavery was the issue that drove the two sections apart. * M. A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). Views the development of the sectional crisis through the lens of Manifest Destiny. Territorial expansion drove hostility between the sections. Morrison concentrates on the political developments of the period connected to the acquisition and organization of the territories to show how the issue of slavery in the territories polarized the sections. * D. M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848,1861 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1976). The most comprehensive survey of the decade before the war. Potter traces the development of slavery as a political issue that North and South could not resolve. While it is a masterly and nuanced treatment of the political history, it does not incorporate social history and is more detailed than is useful for most undergraduates. E. H. Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Wilmington, Scholarly Resources, 2004) has recently supplanted Potter as a survey of the decade. It is an easier read for undergraduates and incorporates the new literature than has emerged since Potter wrote. * S. Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, NY: Norton, 2005). A sweeping history of the United States from the constitutional era to the outbreak of the Civil War. Wilentz attempts to update Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s synthesis The Age of Jackson by returning to a focus on the evolution of democracy while at the same time incorporating the social history that emerged after Schlesinger wrote. Only the last third of this very long book covers the 1850s, but Wilentz argues that democracy had taken differing sectional forms by that period: a free-labor version in the North and a plantation version in the South. Online Materials 1. The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/) A prize-winning website that profiles Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Material from this website formed the basis of Ayres, In the Presence of Mine Enemies. Although the website primarily concentrates on the Civil War itself, it provides access to newspapers and letters and diaries from the 1850s that show the development of, and reaction to, the sectional crisis in those counties. It also shows students the types of materials (census, tax, and church records as well as newspapers and letters and diaries) with which historians work to build an argument. 2. American Memory from the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html) Although not specifically devoted to the origins of the Civil War, the American Memory site provides access to the collections of the Library of Congress which contain massive amounts of primary materials for students and scholars. From the website, one can gain access to congressional documents, periodicals from the 1850s, nineteenth-century books, music, legal documents, memoirs by white and black southerners as well as slave narratives. Sample Syllabus Nicole Etcheson's ,Origins of the Civil War,' History Compass, 3/1 (2005), doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2005.00166.x can be used as a reading in any Civil War course. [source]


International Migration and Gender in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 5 2006
Douglas S. Massey
ABSTRACT We review census data to assess the standing of five Latin American nations on a gender continuum ranging from patriarchal to matrifocal. We show that Mexico and Costa Rica lie close to one another with a highly patriarchal system of gender relations whereas Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are similar in having a matrifocal system. Puerto Rico occupies a middle position, blending characteristics of both systems. These differences yield different patterns of female relative to male migration. Female householders in the two patriarchal settings displayed low rates of out-migration compared with males, whereas in the two matrifocal countries the ratio of female to male migration was much higher, in some case exceeding their male counterparts. Multivariate analyses showed that in patriarchal societies, a formal or informal union with a male dramatically lowers the odds of female out-migration, whereas in matrifocal societies marriage and cohabitation have no real effect. The most important determinants of female migration from patriarchal settings are the migrant status of the husband or partner, having relatives in the United States, and the possession of legal documents. In matrifocal settings, however, female migration is less related to the possession of documents, partner's migrant status, or having relatives in the United States and more strongly related to the woman's own migratory experience. Whereas the process of cumulative causation appears to be driven largely by men in patriarchal societies, it is women who dominate the process in matrifocal settings. Sur la base des données des recensements, nous situons cinq nations d'Amérique latine sur une échelle d'organisation sociale entre les sexes allant du partriarcat à la matrifocalité. Nous montrons que le Mexique et le Costa Rica occupent des positions voisines avec un système de relations entre les sexes foncièrement patriarcal alors que le Nicaragua et la République dominicaine fonctionnent tous deux selon un système matrifocal. Puerto Rico se situe au milieu, avec un mélange de caractéristiques des deux systèmes. De ces divergences découlent différents modèles de répartion de la migration selon le sexe. Dans les deux environnements patriarcaux, les femmes à la tête d'un ménage présentaient de bas taux d'émigration par rapport aux hommes, alors que dans les deux pays matrifocaux le ratio entre migration féminine et migration masculine était bien plus élevé, la première dépassant parfois la seconde. Des analyses à variables multiples ont montré que dans les sociétés patriarcales toute union avec un homme, qu'elle soit officielle ou officieuse, fait considérablement baisser les chances d'émigration d'une femme, alors que dans les sociétés matrifocales, le mariage et la cohabitation n'ont aucune incidence réelle. Les facteurs qui déterminent avant tout la migration féminine dans les sociétés patriarcales sont : le statut de migrant du mari ou du partenaire, l'existence de parenté aux Etats-Unis et la possession de papiers en règle. Toutefois, dans un environnement matrifocal la migration féminine ne dépend pas tant des facteurs susmentionnés que de la propre expérience migratoire des intéressées. Alors que dans les sociétés patriarcales, le processus de causalité cumulative semble être généré principalement par les hommes, dans les sociétés matrifocales il est dominé par les femmes. Se pasa revista a datos cenales para evaluar la situació encinco países latinoamericanos en un conjunto de modelos de relaciones entre los géneros, que va del patriarcal al matrifocal. Se demuestra que Máxico y Costa Rica tienen una situación muy parecida, con un sistema muy patriarcal, mientras que Nicaragua y la República Dominicana se asemejan por tener un sistema matrifocal. Puerto Rico ocupa un lugar intermedio, con un sistema que combina las características de ambos modelos. Esas diferencias producen distintos modelos de migración femenina y masculina. Las familias encabezadas por mujeres en los dos sistemas patriarcales mostraron tasas bajas de emigración en comparación con los hombres, mientras que en los dos países con sistemas matrifocales, la relación entre migració femenina y masculina fue mucho más elevada, excediendo en algunos casos la correspondiente a los hombres. Distintos tipos de análisis demostraron que en las sociedades patriarcales, una unión formal o informal con un hombre reduce considerablemente las posibilidades de emigración de la mujer, mientras que en las sociedades matrifocales, ni el matrimonio ni la convivencia afectan realmente esas posibilidades. Los elementos determinantes de mayor importancia para la migración de la mujer en los sistemas patriarcales son la situación de migrante del esposo o compañero, el hecho de tener familiares en los EstadosUnidos, y la posesión de documentos legales. En las sociedades matrifocales, sin embargo, la migración de la mujer guarda menos relación con la posesión de documentos, la sitación de migrante del compañero o el tener familiares que residan en los Estados Unidos, y está más vinculada a la propia experiencia migratoria de la mujer. Mientras que en las sociedades patriarcales el proceso de acumulación de causas parece ser impulsado mayormento por el hombre, es la mujer la que domina el proceso en las sociedades matrifocales. [source]


The Cat and Mouse Game at the Mexico-U.S. Border: Gendered Patterns and Recent Shifts1

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
Katharine M. Donato
This paper provides new insights into the process of undocumented border crossing by examining both men and women in the process. We investigate differences in the ways in which men and women make their way across the well-guarded Mexico-U.S. border, and the extent to which men and women by the end of the 1990s were similar to, or different from, their counterparts who crossed before 1986 and the implementation of immigration policy designed to reduce undocumented migration. We find substantial differences in how men and women crossed the border without legal documents and in their chances of being apprehended. Our analysis makes clear that shifts in U.S. immigration policy after 1986 have led to women's greater reliance on the assistance of paid smugglers to cross without documents but men were more likely to cross alone. Moreover, immediately after 1986, women on first U.S. trips faced higher risks of being apprehended compared to women who migrated in the early 1980s, but men faced lower risks. After accumulating some U.S. experience, however, both women and men faced lower risks of being detected after 1986 compared to earlier in that decade. [source]