Law Commons^™

Discounts For Fractional Ownership Of Real Property Are Accepted, So Why Haven’T The Irs And Courts Accepted Discounts For Fractional Ownership Of Artwork?, Maren N. Eisenmesser

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In 2014, the Fifth Circuit held that Mr. Elkins’s estate was entitled to apply a fractional ownership discount to determine the taxable value of the undivided interest in artwork. The estate received a $14 million refund plus interest. The Internal Revenue Code directs taxpayers to value the items in a gross estate at their fair market value. Fractional ownership adds another problem in the valuation of an estate’s interest property. In general, courts have accepted fractional ownership discounts for real property. In contrast, courts have been reluctant to apply a fractional ownership discount for artwork. This Note will argue that …

Trustee Liability For Breach Of Trust—Loss Or Profit, Or Loss And Profit?, Kenneth F. Joyce

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Cuban Asset Control Regulations: The Transfer Of Estate Assets To Cuban Heirs Under The Obama And Trump Administrations, Madeleine N. Elser

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Neglecting Responsibilities: The Uniform Probate Code's Failure To Address Child Maltreatment And Poverty, Joshua Hamlet

Journal of Law and Policy

When a child or adolescent passes away, parents are typically stricken with grief and unable to cope with the devastation. Unfortunately, the emotional toll is not the only challenge parents face. Some are forced to handle legal battles regarding the administration of their deceased child’s estate. Since the majority of children do not have a will, state adoptions of the Uniform Probate Code dictate what happens to the child’s estate during these tragedies. But what happens in the event these parents abused or neglected their child while that child was still living? While the Uniform Probate Code advises that these …

Front Matter

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Tax And Practical Aspects Of The Installment Sale To A Spousal Grantor Trust, William R. Culp Jr., Paul M. Hattenhauer, Briani Bennett Mellen

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Re-Considering Undue Influence In The Digital Era, Jodie Distler

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Decision And Persuasion: Re-Conceiving The Role Of The Planner Where Undue Influence Is Suspected, James C. Milton, Katheleen R. Guzman

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Making Directed Trusts Work: The Uniform Directed Trust Act, John D. Morley, Robert H. Sitkoff

ACTEC Law Journal

Directed trusts have become a familiar feature of trust practice in spite of considerable legal uncertainty about them. Fortunately, the Uniform Law Commission has just finished work on the Uniform Directed Trust Act (UDTA), a new uniform law that offers clear solutions to the many legal uncertainties surrounding directed trusts. This article offers an overview of the UDTA, with particular emphasis on four areas of practical innovation. The first is a careful allocation of fiduciary duties. The UDTA’s basic approach is to take the law of trusteeship and attach it to whichever person holds the powers of trusteeship, even if …

Wills, Trusts, And Estates, J. William Gray Jr., Katherine E. Ramsey

University of Richmond Law Review

The 2019 Virginia General Assembly did not enact any major new legislation, but it did pass several significant amendments. Among the most useful was an amendment to the Virginia Uniform Transfers to Minors Act which extended the maximum age for custodianships from twenty-one to twenty-five. The legislature also decided to cease imposing income taxes on estates and trusts whose sole connection to the Commonwealth is that they are being administered here. It responded to two recent court cases involving the required execution formalities for leases and the right to award attorneys’ fees in actions involving an agent’s breach of fiduciary …

Unlimited Liability For Banks: Deposits As Fraudulent Transfers, Katherine Zampas

St. Mary's Law Journal

One of a trustee’s most valuable resources in bankruptcy proceedings is his avoidance powers. A trustee is charged with the duty to recover and recapture any property wrongfully removed from the estate by way of fraudulent transfer or preference. In some cases, a trustee has attempted to treat a debtor’s deposit into a bank account as a transfer, rendering it subject to his avoidance powers. Such a result will leave banks collaterally responsible as a transferee for a debtor’s conduct despite their lack of culpability and control over the funds.

The definition of transfer within the Bankruptcy Code is comprehensive …

Remedying The Abuse Of Organisational Forms: Trusts And Companies Considered, Pey Woan Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Both the trust and the company are organisational forms distinguished bytheir ability to facilitate affirmative asset partitioning. However, this feature isvulnerable to abuse by those whose purpose is to defeat creditor rights. Thisarticle considers recent developments in judicial doctrines aimed atcountering such abuse and the extent to which they are explicable by, orcoherent, with economic analyses drawn from the work of Hansmann andKraakma.

Libraries, Authors, And Literary Estates: The Complex Case Of Rosenbach V. Sendak (2016), Patrick Roughen

Charleston Library Conference

This research examines a lawsuit filed by the Rosenbach Museum and Library of Philadelphia in 2016 against the Estate of Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) to determine the distribution of some of Sendak’s collection of rare books. In the lawsuit, the Rosenbach claimed the executors of the Sendak estate had withheld a portion of the rare books to which it was entitled under Sendak’s will. This paper suggests possible ways in which institutions such as libraries, archives, and museums might anticipate and address some of the ownership-related problems that arise during the acquisition and/or loss of collections of an artist or author …

Honoring Probable Intent In Intestacy: An Empirical Assessment Of The Default Rules And The Modern Family, Danaya C. Wright, Beth Sterner

Danaya C. Wright

This article provides preliminary analysis of an empirical study of nearly 500 wills probated in Alachua and Escambia Counties in the State of Florida in 2013. The particular focus of the study is to determine if there are noticeable patterns of property distribution preferences among decedents based on their diverse family relationships. Earlier empirical studies of distribution preferences indicated that a majority of married decedents wanted to give all or most of their estates to their surviving spouses. As a result of these studies, most states amended their probate codes to give surviving spouses a sizable percentage of a decedent …

Inheritance Equity: Reforming The Inheritance Penalties Facing Children In Non-Traditional Families, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

This Article examines how more than 50% of children living today may be disadvantaged by 1950s era inheritance laws that privilege and protect only those children living in nuclear families with their biological parents. Because so many children today are living in blended families — single-parent families, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) families, or are living with relatives — their right to inherit from the persons who function as their parents are severely limited by most state probate codes, even though they would likely be entitled to child support under the parent-child definitions of most of those states' …

Transfer On Death Deeds: It Is Time To Establish The Rules Of The Game, Stephanie Emrick

Florida Law Review

A transfer on death deed is a form of deed that allows real property assets to pass at death outside of the probate process. Through the twentieth century, there has been a movement in the world of property law—dubbed “the nonprobate revolution”—that focuses on using will substitutes to transfer personal property assets at death without the typical probate process. This is important because the probate process can be quite lengthy and expensive. Until recently, the nonprobate option was not readily available where real property assets were a part of the estate. The transfer on death deed essentially evolved from the …

Congress And Commercial Trusts: Dealing With Diversity Jurisdiction Post-Americold, S.I. Strong

Florida Law Review

Commercial trusts are one of the United States’ most important types of business organizations, holding trillions of dollars of assets and operating nationally and internationally as a “mirror image” of the corporation. However, commercial trusts remain underappreciated and undertheorized in comparison to corporations, often as a result of the popular but mistaken belief that commercial trusts are analogous to traditional intergenerational trusts or that corporations reflect the primary or paradigmatic form of business association. The treatment of commercial trusts reached its nadir in early 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court held in Americold Realty Trust v. ConAgra Foods, Inc. that …

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes: A Tale Of Two Testaments, Stephen R. Alton

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Holmes: A Tale Of Two Testaments, Stephen R. Alton

Faculty Scholarship

Author's Note: This Article takes the form of an epistolary exchange across the centuries, comparing and contrasting two noted wills in Victorian literature. To preserve verisimilitude, the author lets these letters and emails speak for themselves, without any formal introduction, just as would have occurred in Victorian epistolary fiction. It is the author's hope that the relevant testaments and the legal issues they present will make themselves clear as these exchanges proceed. Any reader desiring a more formal introduction to this Article is directed to the first email (below) written by the author to Mr. Utterson and Mr. Holmes; this …

What Can The Apple Teach The Orange? Lessons U.S. Land Trusts Can Learn From The National Trust In The U.K., Jessica Owley, Lauren Gwin, Sally K. Fairfax

Articles

The National Trust in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland is one of the oldest and most revered private land conservation organizations in the world. While the private land conservation movements in the United States and the United Kingdom began at a similar time and with similar tools, conservation attitudes and methods in the two countries diverged. Today, the National Trust dominates land conservation in the U.K. while the strength of the U.S. movement is the energy of over 1,500 smaller organizations operating at different scales across the country. Despite the differences, this project looks to the National Trust in England …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Method In Fiduciary Law's Mixed Messages, Evan J. Criddle

Evan J. Criddle

No abstract provided.

Liberty In Loyalty: A Republican Theory Of Fiduciary Law, Evan J. Criddle

Evan J. Criddle

Conventional wisdom holds that the fiduciary duty of loyalty is a prophylactic rule that serves to deter and redress harmful opportunism. This idea can be traced back to the dawn of modern fiduciary law in England and the United States, and it has inspired generations of legal scholars to attempt to explain and justify the duty of loyalty from an economic perspective. Nonetheless, this Article argues that the conventional account of fiduciary loyalty should be abandoned because it does not adequately explain or justify fiduciary law’s core features.

The normative foundations of fiduciary loyalty come into sharper focus when viewed …

Virginia Survey Of Law: Property Section; Trusts And Estates Section, Lynda L. Butler

Lynda L. Butler

No abstract provided.

Bank Liability For Fiduciary Fraud, Marion W. Benfield Jr., Peter A. Alces

Peter A. Alces

No abstract provided.

Your Money Or Your Wife's?: Social Security Changes Considered, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Of Piketty And Perpetuities: Dynastic Wealth In The Twenty-First Century (And Beyond), Eric Kades

Eric A. Kades

For the first time since independence, in a nation founded in large part on the rejection of a fixed nobility determined by birth and perpetuated by inheritance, America is paving the way for the creation of dynastic family wealth. Abolition of the Rule Against Perpetuities in over half the states along with sharp reductions in, and likely elimination of, the federal estate tax mean that there soon will be no obstacles to creating large pools of dynastic wealth insuring lavish incomes to heirs for generations without end. The timing of these legal changes could hardly be worse. Marshaling innovative economic …

Purpose Trusts As A Planning Tool For The 21st Century, Thomas E. Simmons, Brad Myers

Thomas E. Simmons

No abstract provided.

In Re Fund For Encouragement Of Self Rel., 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 10 (Apr. 25, 2019), Skylar Arakawa-Pamphilon

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

NRS § 163.556 does not permit a court to disregard trustees' objections and appoint half of a wholly charitable trust’s assets to a new trust when, pursuant to the trust instrument’s terms, all trustees must consent before distributing half of the trust’s assets.

Proposed New York Trust Code, Surrogate’S Court Advisory Committee To The Chief Administrative Judge Of The Courts Of The State Of New York

Other Scholarship

Text of a proposed New York Trust Code to be submitted to the New York Legislature.