Grief as a Family Affair: Property Rights, Grief Rights, and the Exclusion of Close Friends as Survivors

A recent Omega article by Sklar and Hartley established that although the close friends of one who dies—survivor-friends—grieve and mourn much as do family members, they tend to be excluded from legitimate and open grief and mourning rituals. No explanation was presented for this exclusion. This article proposes an explanation in terms of conflicting property norms. With respect to the transmission of property at death, a normative conflict exists between the property rights of family and the property rights of close friends of the deceased. It is argued that close friends are denied grief rights to prevent them from exercising their property rights, allowing family members to make their claims unimpeded.