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Full-Text Articles in Law
How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?, Felix B. Chang
How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?, Felix B. Chang
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Essay argues that trusts and estates (“T&E”) should prioritize intergenerational economic mobility—the ability of children to move beyond the economic station of their parents—above all other goals. The field’s traditional emphasis on testamentary freedom fosters the stickiness of inequality. For wealthy settlors, dynasty trusts sequester assets from the nation’s system of taxation and stream of commerce. For low-income decedents, intestacy splinters property rights and inhibits their transfer, especially to nontraditional heirs.
Holistically, this Essay argues that T&E should promote mean regression of the wealth distribution curve over time. This can be accomplished by loosening spending in ultrawealthy households and …
Asymmetries In The Generation And Transmission Of Wealth, Felix B. Chang
Asymmetries In The Generation And Transmission Of Wealth, Felix B. Chang
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Article assigns a redistributive role to the legal rules of trusts and estates. Unlike business law, trusts and estates has lagged in articulating a comprehensive theory on inequality. Consequently, income inequality is compounded intergenerationally as wealth inequality, with dire consequences for economic productivity and social stability. To move the discourse on wealth inequality, this Article explores the divergent approaches toward inequality in business law and trusts and estates.
Additionally, this Article recasts trusts and estates’ legal rules as wealth transfer mechanisms. Four categories of rules are implicated: (1) rules that interact with the tax system, (2) rules that govern …