I first came across repudiation of inheritance in my initial foray into Florence's rich archives, more than thirty years ago. At that time, I was researching emancipation of children. Repudiation struck me as both similar to emancipation – perhaps too similar, in the concerns it raised about fraud and its consequent parallel registration – and too strange. It was hard to understand why one would turn down an inheritance, even in the face of language that it was damnosa. In contrast, it was not so hard for one who grew up in the sixties to understand why a child would want to be free of paternal control or even why a father might want to relinquish such control.

Emancipation turned out to lead to other elements that I had not anticipated, as any fruitful research topic should. It was, as I had hoped, a good point to begin to understand the workings of law within families. Repudiation remained a nagging and puzzling presence on the margins. As part of the large, complex, and foreboding area of inheritance, repudiation seemed beyond reach. Having spent an enjoyable lunch one day in Berkeley dissuading Gene Brucker from tackling inheritance as a research topic because of its vastness and complexity, I only further convinced myself that it was too difficult. Maybe this book will serve to convince readers that my initial premonition was correct.

Inheritance was the vital process – the central moment in the life cycle – by which social reproduction occurred.