Estates and Trusts Commons^™

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 spurring savings and investment in low-income households.

T&E scholars are tackling inequality with greater urgency than ever before; yet basic questions remain. The Essay contributes to these conversations by articulating a comprehensive framework for progressive inheritance law that redresses long-term inequality.

Justifying Anglo-American Trusts Law, Ying Khai Liew

William & Mary Business Law Review

Is the existence of trusts law within Anglo-American law justified? The literature to date does not provide a satisfactory answer. Situating the doctrinal features of trusts law within the liberal tradition of political morality, this Article suggests that trusts law is justified because it enhances personal autonomy in a unique way. It is comprehensively autonomy-enhancing, with express, constructive, and resulting trusts each playing a unique role in achieving this aim. Thus, the law provides a facility for property owners to unilaterally deal with their own property (express trusts), allows individuals the freedom to enlist others in their pursuit of their ...

Inheritance Crimes, David Horton, Reid Kress Weisbord

Washington Law Review

The civil justice system has long struggled to resolve disputes over end-of-life transfers. The two most common grounds for challenging the validity of a gift, will, or trust— mental incapacity and undue influence—are vague, hinge on the state of mind of a dead person, and allow factfinders to substitute their own norms and preferences for the donor’s intent. In addition, the slayer doctrine—which prohibits killers from inheriting from their victims—has generated decades of constitutional challenges.

But recently, these controversial rules have migrated into an area where the stakes are significantly higher: the criminal justice system. For ...

Appraising Problems, Not Stuff, Chad J. Pomeroy

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Hb 409, A Drastic Departure From Florida’S Traditional Stance On Will Execution Formalities, Justin Shifrin

Journal of Technology Law & Policy

The baby boomer generation is aging, and many of the citizens that belong to this generation are retiring to Florida. Accordingly, Florida is expected to host one of the largest wealth transfers in history. And while the baby boomer population ages, our society is becoming more digitized. Things we traditionally did by pen and paper are now increasingly done by computer and keystroke, and wills are no exception. What was previously considered a document whose sacred nature could only be appreciated by the affixation of a handwritten signature at the bottom thereof, wills are now being drafted, signed, witnessed, and ...

When The Sanity Code Becomes The Insanity Code: Following O'Bannon's Lead Is The Key To Solving Group Licensing For Ncaa Student-Athletes, Lee Vanhorn

Arkansas Law Review

"Many times when you lose, it's the greatest opportunity to improve. You have this unique opportunity to make dramatic change that you probably couldn't make when things seem to be going right." A YouTube channel titled “Deestroying” displays unique talents of a Costa Rican immigrant named Donald De La Haye (“De La Haye”). De La Haye has a second channel, “KD Family,” and together, the channels have a combined 486 million views and more than three million subscribers. De La Haye majored in marketing at the University of Central Florida (“UCF”), but creates content for his YouTube channels ...

Using Tax Law To Perpetuate Gentrification: Vinegar Hill Lives Again In Charlottesville, Kelsey Massey

GGU Tax & Estate Planning Review

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, enacted by the Trump administration, created the largest government-sponsored subsidy for urban renewal through the Opportunity Zones program. This tax expenditure is designed to delay and even avoid capital gains taxes to incentivize development in areas deemed to be in economic distress. While the program’s stated intent is to revitalize neighborhoods, build affordable housing, or promote small businesses, the selection of qualified areas is based on the income rate of residents. That is to say, a subsidy program focused on the physical place improvements has based its designation criteria on local resident ...

Dead Men (And Women) Should Tell Tales: Narrative, Intent, And The Construction Of Wills, Karen J. Sneddon

Faculty Publications

The will is one of the most personal legal documents that an individual may ever create. The will is written in first person, present tense. Yet most wills reveal little of the person, the personality, or the personal. The inclusion of the testator’s relationships with people, entities, and property does little to convey the testator’s wishes, hopes, or fears. Some may assert that as a formal legal document, the will should be impersonal and be built using standardized, formulaic phrasing. Not only does such position overstate the accuracy of standardized, formulaic phrasing, but such position also ignores the ...

The Domains Of Loyalty: Relationships Between Fiduciary Obligation And Intrinsic Motivation, Deborah A. Demott

William & Mary Law Review

Recent scholarly inquiry into fiduciary law predominantly focuses on whether the subject is a coherent field and not a piecemeal assortment of doctrinal detail. This Article looks to the future and to relationships between the formal domain of fiduciary law and other factors that shape conduct. These include intrinsic motivation, markets for professional services, and forces like the operation of reputation. The Article demonstrates that looking across domains, from the legal to the extralegal, casts in sharp relief the reasons why fiduciary law is distinctive. These stem from the specific qualities of relationships to which fiduciary law applies, as well ...

Study On The Compliance Of Islamic Investment Funds With The Provisions Of Islamic Law (Sharia) Within The Framework Of French Legislation, Rasha Hattab

Journal Sharia and Law

The religious nature of Islamic investment funds distinguishes them from the traditional ones by making their assets credible for Muslims investors on the one hand, and, on the other hand, obligating the Investment Services Providers to reassure investors about their effective religious compliance which constitutes a real challenge in the Occidental Countries. In this study, dedicated to the control of compliance of the Islamic Investment Funds with the Islamic Sharia in France, we will devote the first section for discussing the means of this control and simultaneously the role that the Sharia Supervisory Board could play in ensuring its effectiveness ...

The Law Of Trusts And Collective Action: A New Approach To Property Deadlocks, Amnon Lehavi

University of Cincinnati Law Review

This Article identifies the key role that trust law can play in resolving collective action problems pertaining to assets with multiple stakeholders. Devising a multi-beneficiary trust may serve as an effective institutional alternative, when the direct governance of an asset by its co-owners reaches a deadlock, and the partition of the asset among them is either impractical or inefficient.

The Article examines various case studies in which property may become deadlocked among multiple stakeholders, featuring either commons or anticommons problems. In the case of land, the need to assemble land from multiple owners for (re)development, or the task of ...

How To Sue An Asue? Closing The Racial Wealth Gap Through The Transplantation Of A Cultural Institution, Cyril A.L. Heron

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Asues, academically known as Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (or ROSCAs for short), are informal cultural institutions that are prominent in developing countries across the globe. Their utilization in those countries provide rural and ostracized communities with a means to save money and invest in the community simultaneously. Adoption of the asue into the United States could serve as the foundation by which to close the racial wealth gap. Notwithstanding the benefits, wholesale adoption of any asue model runs the risk of cultural rejection because the institution is foreign to the African American community.

Drawing upon principles of cultural and ...

Recent Amendments To The Interim Real Estate Registery Of The Emirate Of Dubai (Its Effects On The Legal Characterization In Off Plan Sale Contracts)

Journal Sharia and Law

RECENT AMENDMENTS TO THE INTERIM REAL ESTATE REGISTERY OF THE EMIRATE OF DUBAI (ITS EFFECTS ON THE LEGAL CHARACTERIZATION

IN OFF PLAN SALE CONTRACTS)

Dr. Yasser Al-Iftihat

Associate Professor of Civil Law College of Law, Al Ghurair University, United Arab Emirates

Abstract: The research discusses the regulations of selling off plan real estate units as stated on the Emirate of Dubai by the legislator who has regulated and imposed the subsequent amendments to the law in order to face the most significant challenge in the field of real estate development in the Emirate of Dubai, where distinguishes the real estate ...

The Role Of Trust Law Principles In Defining Public Trust Duties For Natural Resources, John C. Dernbach

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Public trusts for natural resources incorporate both limits and duties on governments in their stewardship of those natural resources. They exist in every state in the United States—in constitutional provisions, statutes, and in common law. Yet the law recognizing public trusts for natural resources may contain only the most basic provisions—often just a sentence or two. The purpose and terms of these public trusts certainly answer some questions about the limits and duties of trustees, but they do not answer all questions. When questions arise that the body of law creating or recognizing a public trust for natural ...

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources ...

Legal Complications Of Repatriation At The British Museum, Hannah R. Godwin

Washington International Law Journal

The British Museum has been the target of criticism around the world for its failure to repatriate controversial cultural property to their respective countries of origin. In 1753, a private collector left his collection to Great Britain if it agreed to build a public museum and designate a Board of Trustees whose duty was to protect the collection for the public. Statutorily incorporating the collector’s intent, Parliament passed legislation binding the Board of Trustees to abide by certain principles, including preserving the collection and prohibiting disposal of objects, except in very few circumstances. As such, the Museum is administrated ...

Final Report: Internship At Hull And Hull Llp, Samantha Henderson-Whaley

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

Over the summer of 2020 I completed a remote internship at Hull & Hull LLP, an estates law firm in Toronto, for the SASAH experiential learning course. Hull & Hull handles estates and trusts litigation. I worked on digitizing charts for a passing of accounts (which is a court audit of a fiduciary’s accounting) for which there have been a considerable number of objections that we had to either refute or attempt to resolve, or there would be a trial. I was responsible for linking evidentiary material to the existing charts in order to ensure that the information was presentable in ...

Bridging The Common Law-Civil Law Divide? The 1985 Trusts Convention, Adeline Chong

Research Collection School Of Law

The Convention on the Law Applicable to Trusts and on their Recognition (hereafter the ‘Hague TrustsConvention’) was concluded on 1 July 1985. It has two main objectives: first, to determine the lawapplicable to trusts, and secondly, to govern the recognition of trusts.Space does not allow for a full examination of the Convention’s provisions. Instead the aims of thischapter are to provide an overview of the Convention and to consider some of its more significanteffects and problematic issues. The underlying issue is whether the Convention can be adjudged asuccess in bridging the divide between trust and non-trust States.

Interview: Robert Patterson, Bacilio Mendez

GGU Tax & Estate Planning Review

Dr. Marcia Ruben, Assistant Professor and Chair of GGU’s Graduate Management Program, speaks with Robert Patterson—an MS Taxation alumnus and Director and Worldwide Tax & Trade Controller at Microsoft—about his life and career.