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Full-Text Articles in Law

Bastardy And The Statute Of Wills: Interpreting A Sixteenth-Century Statute With Cases And Readings, M C. Mirow Jan 2016

Bastardy And The Statute Of Wills: Interpreting A Sixteenth-Century Statute With Cases And Readings, M C. Mirow

M. C. Mirow

The Statute of Wills of 1540 created a tax loophole for transfers of property to illegitimate children. Assessments for wardships that would normally be imposed on certain transfers of land to children could be effectively avoided by establishing that the donee was illegitimate, and therefore a stranger to the donor for the purposes of the statute. English lawyers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries educated their colleagues about this newly available loophole. In the inns of court, lawyers discussed the statutory provisions and recent revenue cases from the Court of Wards. This article sets out the loophole, examines how the …


An Obituary Of The Federal Estate Tax, M C. Mirow, Bruce A. Mcgovern Jan 2016

An Obituary Of The Federal Estate Tax, M C. Mirow, Bruce A. Mcgovern

M. C. Mirow

The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of the Federal Estate Tax. Using this form of descriptive narrative, the authors present a concise summary of the most important changes in the tax over the past eighty-five years.