Estates and Trusts Commons^™

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 ...

The Family Llc: A New Approach To Insuring Dynastic Wealth, Evan M. Purcell

Evan M Purcell

No abstract provided.

On Becoming Charitable: Predicting And Encouraging Charitable Bequests In Wills, Kristine Knaplund

Kristine Knaplund

On Becoming Charitable: Predicting and Encouraging Charitable Bequests in Wills

Kristine S. Knaplund, Professor of Law

What causes people to leave their property to charity in their wills? Many scholars have explored the effects of tax laws on charitable bequests, but now that more than 99% of Americans’ estates are exempt from federal taxes, what non-tax factors predict charitable giving? This Article explores charitable bequests before the federal estate tax and a deduction for charitable bequests were enacted by Congress. By examining two years of probate files in Los Angeles and St. Louis, in which 16.6% of St. Louis ...

Revisiting The Revolution: Reintegrating The Wealth Transmission System, Melanie B. Leslie, Stewart E. Sterk

Boston College Law Review

Thirty years ago, John Langbein published “The Nonprobate Revolution and the Future of Succession.” The article celebrated testators’ newfound ability to avoid the expense and delay of the probate court system by holding assets in a variety of non-probate devices, such as retirement and bank accounts with beneficiary designations and revocable trusts. Langbein highlighted problems the revolution might generate and predicted how they might be resolved. Since then, significant problems have indeed developed. First, wills law doctrines designed to effectuate intent of testators have not been universally extended to non-probate transfers. Second, the fragmentation of the wealth transmission process has ...

Creation, Administration, And Effectiveness Of The "Failsafe" Trust For Nonresident Aliens, Andrew H. Prussack

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Dispatches From The Trenches Of America's Great Gun Trust Wars, Lee-Ford Tritt

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tipping The Scales In Favor Of Charitable Bequests: A Critique, Elizabeth R. Carter

Pace Law Review

The public policy favoring testamentary bequests to charities is well established in the law. However, that public policy can, and does, conflict with other equally well-founded public policies. When confronted with this conflict, courts are often dismissive or even hostile towards the parties seeking to challenge a testamentary bequest to a charity. I argue that the policy favoring charitable giving has gone too far and has, in some instances, undermined other important public policies. Specifically, courts and legislators have strengthened the charitable bequest policy without giving enough consideration to other, equally important public policies. This problem is not new. History ...

Appellate Division, Second Department, Langan V. St. Vincent's Hospital Of New York, Christin Harris

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright Trust, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

Faculty Scholarship

Collaborative production of expressive content accounts for an ever growing number of copyrighted works. Indeed, in the age of content sharing and peer production, collaborative efforts may have become the paradigmatic form of authorship. Surprisingly, though, copyright law continues to view the single author model as the dominant model of peer production. Copyright law’s approach to authorship is currently based on a hodgepodge of rigid doctrines that conflate ownership and control. The result is a binary system under which a contributor to a collaborative work is either recognized as an author with a full control and management rights or ...

A Comparative Guide Of Where To Die: Should The United Kingdom Repeal Its Inheritance Tax?, William T. Thistle

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

New York’S Decanting Statute: Helping An Old Vintage Come To Life Or Spoiling The Settlor’S Fine Wine?, David Restrepo

Pace Law Review

The Comment examines trust decanting in four parts. Part I reviews the historical evolution of decanting statutes, first from common law roots, and later focusing on the legislative history of New York’s decanting statute. Part II briefly explains the functionality of section 10-6.6 of the NY EPTL; the “how does it work” explanation of the statute that authorizes decanting. Part III will discuss the many practical uses of the decanting statute. Finally, Part IV will transition into a discussion on how the trustee’s use of this statute not only leaves him in limbo regarding the tax treatment ...

The Creeping Federalization Of Wealth-Transfer Law, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

This article appears in a symposium issue published by the Vanderbilt Law Review on The Role of Federal Law in Private Wealth Transfer. Federal authorities have little experience in making law that governs wealth transfers, because that function is traditionally within the province of state law. Although state wealth-transfer law has undergone significant modernization over the last few decades, all three branches of the federal government—legislative, judicial, and executive—have increasingly gone their own way. Lack of experience and, in many cases, lack of knowledge on the part of federal authorities have not dissuaded them from undermining well-considered state ...

A Tale Of Two Countries: Comparing The Law Of Inheritance In Two Seemingly Opposite Systems , Ray D. Madoff

Boston College International and Comparative Law Review

Although at first glance French and U.S. inheritance laws appear to be diametrically opposed, this paper provides a deeper analysis. In doing so, it explains that nuances within both systems have made the laws more similar than they initially appear. U.S. inheritance laws, explicitly characterized by freedom of testation, include numerous substantive limits on how a testator may dispose of her property at death. Courts often use doctrines such as mental capacity, undue influence, and fraud to void wills that do not provide for the decedent’s children. Also, because over one half of all Americans die intestate ...

Navigating A Post-Windsor World: The Promise And Limits Of Marriage Equality, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

When the 2013 landmark decision in U.S. v. Windsor invalidated part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it was hailed as a landmark civil rights victory, but its implementation has been far from seamless. The federal government has not applied a uniform rule for marriage recognition, applying a state-of-domicile rule for some purposes (Social Security) and a broader state-of-celebration rule for others (e.g., federal tax matters). Moreover, Windsor did not directly address the state-level marriage prohibitions that remain in place in the majority of states. As a result, the United States continues to be a patchwork of ...

A Tale Of Two Countries: Comparing The Law Of Inheritance In Two Seemingly Opposite Systems, Ray D. Madoff

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Although at first glance French and U.S. inheritance laws appear to be diametrically opposed, this paper provides a deeper analysis. In doing so, it explains that nuances within both systems have made the laws more similar than they initially appear. U.S. inheritance laws, explicitly characterized by freedom of testation, include numerous substantive limits on how a testator may dispose of her property at death. Courts often use doctrines such as mental capacity, undue influence, and fraud to void wills that do not provide for the decedent’s children. Also, because over one half of all Americans die intestate ...

Can We Trust Trustees? Proposals For Reducing Wrongful Foreclosures, John Campbell

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Here To Eternity: The Folly Of Perpetual Trusts, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Law & Economics Working Papers

Trusts that can operate for as many as a thousand years or even forever, typically for the benefit of the settlor’s descendants living from time to time, now and in the future, are all the rage in banking and estate-planning circles. Before 1986, when Congress passed the federal generation-skipping transfer tax (GST tax), settlors had little incentive and probably little desire to establish perpetual trusts, even though they were permitted to do so under the law of Wisconsin, South Dakota, or Idaho. The GST tax created an artificial incentive for the wealthy to establish such trusts. The origin of ...

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 ...

Beyond The Five Stages Of Grief: Best Practices For Estate Mediation And Advising The Bereaved Client, Louise M. Mimnagh

Western Journal of Legal Studies

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that nothing in this world is certain “except death and taxes.” Yet, as the baby boomer generation increasingly comprises our senior population, a third near-certainty has emerged: family disputes regarding the estate of a deceased family member. This article reviews the Canadian legislative response to these estate disputes thus far through the introduction of Rule 75.1 of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure. It is argued that the introduction of mandatory mediation provides the Estates Bar with an opportunity to review emerging demands on lawyers as well as mediation and bereavement literature in ...

The Digital Death Conundrum: How Federal And State Laws Prevent Fiduciaries From Managing Digital Property, Christina L. Kunz, Damien A. Riehl, James D. Lamm, Peter J. Rademacher

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses four types of fiduciaries, each of which is affected by the vast growth in and the need to manage digital property. The article begins by defining digital property and discussing why it must be managed. The article then discusses how digital property affects powers of attorney, conservatorships, probate administration, and trusts. After illustrating the problems that digital property creates for each fiduciary, the article shifts to resolving these problems. It begins by debunking purported solutions by both private and governmental entities. It concludes by offering a holistic approach to resolving the conflicts facing account holders, fiduciaries, and ...