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Common Law

University of Michigan Law School

Death

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Full-Text Articles in Estates and Trusts

Joint Tenancy: The Estate Lawyer's Continuing Burden, John E. Riecker Mar 1966

Joint Tenancy: The Estate Lawyer's Continuing Burden, John E. Riecker

Michigan Law Review

The discussion which follows will be divided into three major parts. First, it will be important to see why so much real and personal property remains in joint tenancy between husband and wife or in entireties tenancy. It has been almost eighteen years since Congress eliminated the necessity of holding property in this form in order to split income therefrom for income tax purposes. Is inertia the only reason for the popularity of joint ownership, or are there other reasons? Second, we shall review the familiar but false assumptions most laymen (and even a few attorneys) commonly make regarding the …


Foreign Personal Representatives, Banks Mcdowell Jr. Jan 1957

Foreign Personal Representatives, Banks Mcdowell Jr.

Michigan Legal Studies Series

In dealing with the legal rules affecting foreign personal representatives, the author of the present monograph is to be commended for the lucid analysis in the following pages of the principal questions that an executor or administrator appointed in one state will encounter in the administration of a single estate on a multi-jurisdictional basis: his right to sue and liability to suit in other states, the effects of his extra-legal action outside the state of his appointment, and the possibilities of reforming existing laws so as to make feasible a system of single administration of decedents' estates. This analysis is …


Descent And Distribution--The 'Worthier Title" Doctrine In Iowa--A Limitation Established, Lewis R. Williams, Jr. S.Ed. May 1951

Descent And Distribution--The 'Worthier Title" Doctrine In Iowa--A Limitation Established, Lewis R. Williams, Jr. S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Testator left his entire estate of less than $7,500 to his wife who had predeceased him. Defendants claimed the estate through operation of the anti-lapse statute, as heirs of the wife. As the distribution statute gave the widow of an intestate the first $7,500 of the estate, plaintiffs, heirs at law of the testator, claimed title on a basis of the "worthier title" doctrine, arguing that the widow, had she lived, would have taken by descent and not by purchase, and therefore the anti-lapse statute did not apply. On appeal from a denial of defendants' motion to transfer the proceeding …


Descent And Distribution-Necessity Of Administration Of Decedents' Estates-Effect Of Statutes Which Change The Devolution Of Personal Property, Neal Seegert S.Ed. May 1947

Descent And Distribution-Necessity Of Administration Of Decedents' Estates-Effect Of Statutes Which Change The Devolution Of Personal Property, Neal Seegert S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

It is almost an axiom of the common law that upon the death of a person the title to his personal property vests in his personal representative. On the other hand it is equally axiomatic that title to real property descends directly to the heirs or devisees, subject to the control of the personal representative and the probate court for purposes of satisfying the debts of the decedent in the absence of sufficient personalty. A number of jurisdictions, however, have by statute altered the common-law doctrine and have provided that title to both personalty and realty passes directly to the …


Wills--Construction-Lapse-"Heirs" As Substitutionary, Ira M. Price, Ii Jan 1947

Wills--Construction-Lapse-"Heirs" As Substitutionary, Ira M. Price, Ii

Michigan Law Review

Testator in his will bequeathed one half of his estate "share and share alike" to his three brothers, naming them, "being to each a one-third part thereof, to them and their heirs forever." Two of the brothers were to testator's knowledge dead at the time he made his will, and the third brother predeceased the testator. In proceedings brought for a construction of the will, held, that the residuary legacies to the brothers did not lapse, but the legacies vested in the respective heirs of deceased brothers. In re Britt's Estate, (Wis. 1946) 23 N.W. (2d) 498.