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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Secret Economy Of Charitable Giving, Allison Anna Tait
The Secret Economy Of Charitable Giving, Allison Anna Tait
Allison Anna Tait
Charitable giving is big business. In 2009, the Internal Revenue Service reported close to 100,000 private foundations, almost double the number from fifteen years earlier. Some of these charitable trusts, like the Gates Foundation, are multi-billion dollar enterprises. Trust instruments and other governing documents set forth the terms that control these gifts. Because charitable trusts can exist in perpetuity, however, changing circumstances sometimes render the terms difficult to fulfill. Courts can apply cy pres, a saving doctrine that allows for the modification of gift restrictions, but in the past courts have tended to apply cy pres narrowly and privilege donor …
The Beginning Of The End Of Coverture: A Reappraisal Of The Married Woman’S Separate Estate, Allison Anna Tait
The Beginning Of The End Of Coverture: A Reappraisal Of The Married Woman’S Separate Estate, Allison Anna Tait
Allison Anna Tait
Before statutory enactments in the nineteenth century granted married women a limited set of property rights, the separate estate trust was, by and large, the sole form of married women’s property. Although the separate estate allowed married women to circumvent the law of coverture, historians have generally viewed the separate estate as an ineffective vehicle for extending property rights to married women. In this Article, I reappraise the separate estate’s utility and argue that Chancery’s separate estate jurisprudence during the eighteenth century was a critical first step in the establishment of married women as property-holders. Separate estates guaranteed critical financial …