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It's not that she didn't deserve it. When they got married he had massive debt (even though he earned very good money). She stuck with him through some major financial shit. Towards the end of the marriage he became CEO of a company and they were fairly loaded. However, she did not work. All of the money brought into the marriage was through his effort.
I have a strong feelings when it comes to economic effort. I think that people should be able to keep what they have earned. That is why I dislike excessive governmental taxation and it is why I dislike divorces where the courts take a bunch of somebody's assets and give them to someone else.
I have a profound belief that this money is not mine nor was it really my grandmother's. I think that it's his.
You should consider a few factors:
1. When two people are married and agree to live in a state of communal finance, that is community property. What belongs to one belongs to another. This is because they are immediate family. Unless there is an agreement to live on separate finances, the finances of one member become the finances of all.
2. Your grandmother married a man in deep debt. She stuck by him and supported him, probably kept up his house for him, and helped him in social situations. The job of the homemaker is arduous, and in your grandmother's time, most likely labor-intensive. Did they have any children? This could be considered work as well.
3. There are a couple inhibiting factors contributing to your grandmother's work situation:
a. women were OUTRIGHT DISCOURAGED from working. A woman who worked was not only considered unconventional, but she would also have been emasculating her husband by taking a job. Consider the social situations surrounding her lifestyle and ask yourself if this would have been a problem in the marriage, had she decided to go against social norms and work, thereby admitting to the world that her husband was not man enough to provide for his family.
b. Women were OUTRIGHT BARRED from many professions, for a variety of reasons. i. women were discouraged/denied from pursuing higher education opportunities. Many colleges, besides high-ranking all-girls schools like wellesley, denied women entrance to institutions of higher learning. Families did not often financially support a woman who wanted to attend a university. Their lack of a college degree barred them from many jobs. ii. even women with higher education were not permitted to hold positions that were considered "men's jobs" until the 1960's at the EARLIEST. To get a job in your degree field as a woman would have been a miracle. The only acceptable careers for a woman in your grandmother's time would have been a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary (adjusted for inflation, none of these jobs payed NEARLY as well as they do today).
When Ruth Bader Ginsberg graduated from an Ivy League University with a law degree, she applied for jobs in law firms. The men laughed and offered her a job as their secretary, if she would be willing to dress a little "friendlier".
C. Given the relative earning power of your grandmother and the social stigma attached to women achieving degrees in higher education and entering the work force, it would have been remarkable if she had decided to work just to make a point of 'contributing' to the household in a non-conventional sense. However, there were probably financial considerations in a cost-benefit analysis of her earning power. Because her husband was high income and she was legally married to him, she would have been taxed in the same income bracket that he was. If she got a low-paying job, she would literally be working for nothing, as her entire yearly salary would most likely be absorbed into the taxes the family payed. She might slightly defray the cost of these taxes, but it is discouraging to know that you will work hard all day and never see a paycheck, as it will all go to the government.
My mom has this same problem. She works and works, sometimes 16 hour days, and barely gets a paycheck.
I would take all of these social and financial situations into account before you make any judgements about whether or not your grandmother truly "earned" this money, or whether it was feasible/financially viable for her to seek employment in a dead end job with no prospects and hoards of businessmen pinching your butt every time you walk by their desks. I think that for the time she lived in, your grandmother probably earned this money, and deserved to keep it.
If you still don't want the $5,000, in light of the circumstances of your grandmother's employment situation, I would donate the money to a charity sponsoring young girls from impoverished areas who wish to attend a university. Then maybe you'll be solving the problem of women's inequity in the job market and encouraging more women to contribute to the household with upwardly-mobile, dynamic careers, and not just slaving away as a maid or a secretary with an ass that feels like a pin cushion.
-------------------- While there is a lower class, I am in it While there is a criminal element, I am of it While there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Eugene V Debs
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Well, I disagree with some of what you said but I agree with some of your points. Thanks for such a long and detailed response.
The more I think about it the more I think that I should just keep it. It can be argued that he knew what he was getting into legally when he decided to marry. He had to have known that half or more of his assets could be taken away from him if they divorced. My grandmother didn't raise any children with him but she did stick with him for ten years.
I dunno. As I said, this is a big moral conundrum.
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