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Full-Text Articles in Estates and Trusts
Litigation Blues For Red-State Trusts: Judicial Construction Issues For Wills And Trusts, Lee-Ford Tritt
Litigation Blues For Red-State Trusts: Judicial Construction Issues For Wills And Trusts, Lee-Ford Tritt
UF Law Faculty Publications
Will construction—the process wherein a trier of fact must determine the testator’s probable intent because the testator’s actual intent is not clear—is too little discussed and too often misunderstood in succession law jurisprudence. Yet, construction issues are becoming increasingly important due to a growing number of will and trust disputes concerning the determination of beneficiaries in a post-Obergefell United States. Currently, courts are being asked to construe terms like “spouse,” “husband,” “wife,” “child,” “son,” “daughter,” and “descendants” in estate planning documents during a time in which understandings of marriage, identity, reproduction, religious liberty, and public policy are rapidly evolving. Interestingly, …
Commentary On Reid Kress Weisbord And David Horton, Boilerplate And Default Rules In Wills Law: An Empirical Analysis, Danaya C. Wright
Commentary On Reid Kress Weisbord And David Horton, Boilerplate And Default Rules In Wills Law: An Empirical Analysis, Danaya C. Wright
UF Law Faculty Publications
Reid Weisbord and David Horton have undertaken an incredibly important empirical study in an area of law that suffers from a large gap in our understanding of how people actually choose to leave their property at their death and the drafting traps that can easily lead to litigation. The study is also important for illustrating how the lawyers we teach in Trusts and Estates need to be more careful in drafting the various documents to manifest their clients' testamentary intent. In particular, Weisbord and Horton studied 230 recently probated wills in Sussex County, New Jersey and discovered that the use …
Moving Forward By Looking Back: The Retroactive Application Of Obergefell, Lee-Ford Tritt
Moving Forward By Looking Back: The Retroactive Application Of Obergefell, Lee-Ford Tritt
UF Law Faculty Publications
The recent Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges has forever altered American jurisprudence. Not only did this decision make same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states, but it also required states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states in accordance with the 14th Amendment. The Court’s holding in Obergefell raises a fundamental question with serious legal and financial significance: when exactly do these once unrecognized marriages legally begin? And to what extent must courts apply Obergefell retroactively? The stakes are high and substantive financial effects are pending on the answer to this question — for, with marriage, comes wide-ranging …
Probate Law Reform And Nonprobate Transfers, Grayson M.P. Mccouch
Probate Law Reform And Nonprobate Transfers, Grayson M.P. Mccouch
UF Law Faculty Publications
The advent of widespread, large-scale probate avoidance has added a new dimension to the project of probate law reform. When the Uniform Probate Code made its debut in 1969, its primary goal was to modernize traditional probate procedures and make them more uniform, flexible, and efficient. The Code's reforms were in part a response to the rise of will substitutes which offered a ready means of transferring property at death outside the probate system. In the intervening years, however, will substitutes have continued to proliferate, while traditional probate procedures have resisted comprehensive reform. The probate system has not become obsolete …