Law Commons^™

Inheritance Crimes, David Horton, Reid Kress Weisbord

Washington Law Review

The civil justice system has long struggled to resolve disputes over end-of-life transfers. The two most common grounds for challenging the validity of a gift, will, or trust— mental incapacity and undue influence—are vague, hinge on the state of mind of a dead person, and allow factfinders to substitute their own norms and preferences for the donor’s intent. In addition, the slayer doctrine—which prohibits killers from inheriting from their victims—has generated decades of constitutional challenges.

But recently, these controversial rules have migrated into an area where the stakes are significantly higher: the criminal justice system. For example, states have criminalized …

May A Man Provide In His Will That His Wife Shall Not Take Under It Unless She Shall Survive Him For A Period Of Forty-Eight Hours?, Stephen Darden Brown

Washington Law Review

The advantages are apparent that might be gained by a man including in his will the provision that his wife should not take under it unless she should survive him for a period of, say, forty-eight hours. As an example, there is the famous French case of Fair v. Vanderbilt, in which both spouses were killed, the wife surviving the husband fifty-nine seconds, and of which a learned author once remarked, "It was the first time in history that a man and his wife were ever killed while riding together." No provision had been made in contemplation of either co-accidental …