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Fraud On The Widow’S Share, W. D. Macdonald

Michigan Legal Studies Series

This study seeks the answer to a troublesome question: What should be done about gratuitous inter vivos transfers in alleged "evasion" of the widow's statutory share? My thesis is that the statutory share should be replaced by the type of decedent's family maintenance legislation found in the British Commonwealth, and that this legislation should be buttressed with anti-evasion provisions. Inter vivos "evasions" seem to be a permanent and increasingly serious concomitant of our forced share system. Part I, dealing with matters of policy, explores the chief aggravating factors. These factors include the high rate of remarriage, which induces transfers to …