CEDAW/C/GC/29 marriage, such as life insurance policies, as part of the marital property subject to division. • Valuation of non-financial contributions to marital property subject to division, including household and family care, lost economic opportunity and tangible or intangible contributions to either spouse’s career development and other economic activity and to the development of his or her human capital. • Consideration of post-dissolution spousal payments as a method of providing for equality of financial outcome. 48. States parties should undertake research and policy studies on women’s economic status within the family and upon the dissolution of family relationships and publish the results in accessible forms. Property rights after death 49. Many States parties, by law or custom, deny widows equality with widowers in respect of inheritance, leaving them vulnerable economically upon the death of a spouse. Some legal systems formally provide widows with other means of economic security, such as through support payments from male relatives or from the estate of the deceased. However, in practice, these obligations may not be enforced. 50. Under customary forms of landholding, which may limit individual purchase or transfer and may only be subject to right of use, upon the death of the husband, the wife or wives may be told to leave the land or may be required to marry a brother of the deceased in order to remain on the land. The existence of offspring, or lack of offspring, may be a major factor in such marriage requirements. In some States parties, widows are subject to “property dispossession” or “property grabbing”, in which relatives of a deceased husband, claiming customary rights, dispossess the widow and her children from property accumulated during the marriage, including property that is not held according to custom. They remove the widow from the family home and claim all the chattels, then ignore their concomitant customary responsibility to support the widow and children. In some States parties, widows are marginalized or banished to a different community. 51. Survivorship rights to social security payments (pensions and disability payments) and in contributory pension systems play a large role in States parties in which couples pay significant sums into those systems during the relationship. States parties are obligated to provide for equality between men and women in terms of spousal and survivorship benefits from social security and pension systems. 52. The laws or practices of some States parties restrict the use of a will to override discriminatory laws and customs and increase women’s share of inheritance. States parties are obligated to adopt laws relating to the making of wills that provide equal rights to women and men as testators, heirs and beneficiaries. 53. States parties are obligated to adopt laws of intestate succession that comply with the principles of the Convention. Such laws should ensure: • Equal treatment of surviving females and males. • That customary succession to use rights or title to land cannot be conditioned on forced marriage to a deceased spouse’s brother (levirate marriage) or any other person, or on the existence or absence of minor children of the marriage. • That disinheritance of the surviving spouse is prohibited. • That “property dispossession/grabbing” is criminalized, and that offenders are duly prosecuted. 9