Inheritance

Washington University in St. Louis psychology researchers Ryan Bogdan and Thomas Oltmanns received a federal grant totaling more than $3 million to study how adversity may perpetuate racial health disparities and health outcomes within families.

Anyone counting on a certain share of an inheritance should be aware that in recent years, parents have become increasingly likely to divide their estates unequally, suggests a new study co-authored by economist Robert Pollak of Washington University in St. Louis.

Estate planning with Fido in mind? Better be careful, says a trusts and estates expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The issue has been in the news recently. British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February 2010, left a sizeable sum of money to his beloved dogs; Trouble, the recently deceased dog of “The Queen of Mean,” Leona Helmsley, famously inherited $12 million. Beyond celebrities, a powerful pet inheritance constituency thrives. Between 12 percent and 27 percent of owners have provisions for their pets in their wills. But what happens to the inheritance when the pet passes?

Richards has observed the inheritance of epigenetic factors in plants.Eric Richards, Ph.D., professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, writing in the May issue of Nature Reviews Genetics, analyzes recent and past research in epigenetics and the history of evolution and proposes that epigenetics should be considered a form of soft inheritance, citing examples in both the plant and mammalian kingdoms.