Estates and Trusts Commons^™

Sicelo Edgar Mpanza N.O V Jabulile Lucy Mpanza And Others (28/2023) [2023] Szsc 59 (18/122023), Phakama C. Shili, Simangele D. Mavundla

SAIPAR Case Review

This case note provides a critical analysis of the landmark Eswatini Supreme Court case of Mpanza v Mpanza as it pertains to nullification of colonial legislative provisions that discriminate against individuals who were married under customary law during their lifetime by exempting their estates from the jurisdiction of the Master of the High Court. Section 68 of the Administration of Estates Act of 1902 regulates the administration of the estates of Africans who die having contracted a customary marriage and encompasses specific clauses that establish the exclusion of the estates from the jurisdiction of the Master of the High Court. …

Unintended Consequences Of Fetal Personhood Statutes: Examples From Tax, Trusts, And Estates, Bridget J. Crawford, Alexis C. Borders, Katherine Keating

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The laws of taxation, trusts, and estates are new fronts in the culture wars over abortion. After the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, some anti-abortion states enacted fetal personhood statutes that have the potential to unsettle and destabilize longstanding legal doctrines that otherwise create predictability and stability in the laws of taxation and succession. This Article makes three principal claims: descriptive, predictive, and normative. First, the Article explores how Dobbs opened the door for states like Georgia to treat zygotes-embryos-fetuses as “dependents” for state income tax purposes. Second, the Article identifies some of the …

Speed Networking Event, Cardozo Trusts And Estates Law Society

2023–2024 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Is A Will Better Than Intestacy?, Kristine S. Knaplund

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Artful Imbalance: How The Us Tax Code And State Trust Laws Enable The Growth Of Inequality Through High-Value Art Collections, Mimi Strauss

Brooklyn Law Review

The United States has become the leading jurisdiction for those who wish to buy and store high-value art and NFTs, pay as few taxes as possible, and ultimately secure their wealth for generations. This “onshore” tax crisis is the result of tax loopholes, money laundering, the securitization of art and NFTs, and the state-by-state trust system. These forms of tax dodging—both legal and illegal—contribute to wealth inequality and deplete the welfare state. As natural disasters and pandemics become ever more present, the United States will rely more heavily on taxes, and that burden should be carried by everyone, not just …

Resolving Unfairness In A Fair Way: How The Grantor Trust Rules Should Be Reformed, Aaron T. Anderson

ACTEC Law Journal

Affluent taxpayers often create one or more grantor trusts to achieve significant tax savings. By leveraging mismatches in the rules between the income and estate tax systems, these taxpayers avoid the compressed income tax brackets of trusts while minimizing the property that is included in their estates for estate tax purposes. Some commentators have argued that reform is needed to remove such mismatches. Yet, trusts that rely on the current grantor trust rules abound. This Note (1) provides a background and history of the rules and use of grantor trusts, (2) argues that harmonizing the estate and income tax systems …

The Importance Of Language In The Context Of Heirs' Property Policymaking, Molefi Mcintosh

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Policy Over Doctrine: A Brief History Of Us Trust Law, Lucas Clover-Alcolea

ACTEC Law Journal

US trust law is unique because whereas in English law the settlor drops out of the picture once he has created the trust, in the US the settlor’s intentions remain paramount. This fundamental difference in turn permits the recognition of spendthrift trusts, whereby the beneficial interest cannot be alienated, in the US whereas in England such trusts are generally invalid. Similarly, whereas in English law the beneficiaries of absolute trusts, and on occasion discretionary trusts, can collectively implode the trust by forcing the trustee to convey the trust fund to them via a Saunders v Vautier application, this is generally …

Unpacking The Digital Vault: Estate Planning Considerations For Non-Fungible Tokens, Ryan D. Tosto

ACTEC Law Journal

The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the emerging, yet largely undefined, principle of openness in EU law. After addressing the semantic confusion existing between openness and transparency, it attempts, through a textual and systemic interpretation of their respective legal bases, to identify the normative content of the European Union's turn to openness. It then explores the principle s potential for attaining its declared Treaty-sanctioned objectives: promoting good governance and ensuring the participation of civil society in the democratic life of the Union. It illustrates that, although openness largely maintains an instrumental rationale, aimed at enhancing …

Front Matter

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Not Such Massively Discretionary Trusts: Proper Purposes Doctrine And Protectors As Means Of Control, Man Yip, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Innovation in drafting trust deeds has been central to international trust practice resulting in the discretionary trusts being the norm in modern wealth management. In a seminal article, Lionel Smith observes that these trust drafting practices have ‘led to an increase in the dispositive discretions held by trustees’. His analysis deprecates this development where the ‘trustees’ dispositive discretions effectively govern the whole trust structure’—which he labels ‘massively discretionary trusts’. Smith goes on to detail the various legal risks entailed in massively discretionary trusts which generally arise from the fact that the explicitly identified residuary or default beneficiaries are usually not …

The New Undue Influence, David Horton, Reid K. Weisbord

Utah Law Review

The doctrine of undue influence has long been the problem child of inheritance law. Undue influence, a hazy combination of fraud and duress, supposedly invalidates bequests that a beneficiary obtained by overriding the volition of a vulnerable testator or settlor. But because relationships are complex, concepts like free will are slippery, and challenges to do native transfers are litigated after the owner dies, courts struggle to apply the rule. Making matters worse, fact finders exploit the principle’s vagueness to protect a decedent’s family at the expense of non-traditional relationships. As a result, scholars have criticized undue influence fordecades, with some …

Equity And Trusts, Hang Wu Tang, Yong Seng Tay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Ivanishvili, Bidzina v Credit Suisse Trust Ltd' ("Ivanishvili") is a landmark trust case which makes major contributions to the law on trustee's duties in a settlor reserved power trust, anti-Bartlett clauses and constraints on the trustee's right to amend the trust deed. An appeal has been allowed in part by the Court of Appeal in Credit Suisse Trust Limited v Ivanishvili, Bidzina. The Court of Appeal's decision will be considered in next year's review. The present review of this case focuses on the decision of Patricia Bergin IJ. Mr Bidzina Ivanishvili ("Plaintiff"), his wife and their three children, were the …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Freedom To Give, Devise, And Bequeath, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

The ability to freely give, devise, or bequeath property is commonly thwarted by persons granted standing to contest formalities and intentionalities of wills, tortious interference with an expectancy, and expanding concern over intervivos gifts and trusts due to increasing elder financial abuse. Nonetheless, there is an expanding class of older, wealthy, and independent-minded donors who seek an effective means by which they may give their wealth to whomever they wish and bypass expensive legal fees, protracted litigation, loss of privacy, and the emotional drama of court proceedings. This Article offers a suggestion of how to restrict the possibility of contest …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …