Law Commons^™

Foreword, Mayo A. Shattuck

Vanderbilt Law Review

In order to get a proper measure of modern Estate Planning I think it may be useful to consider, very briefly, some aspects of its history. The family trust was born into our jurisprudence in an environment which had been moulded in that solid and immovable pyramid called feudalism. In that social order there was nothing of imaginative elasticity. Lateral allegiances or entanglements were as little known as lateral movements. All lines of authority moved from the top; all discharges of duties were rendered vertically to the liege lord next above. As with human relationships so also with property. The …