Estates and Trusts Commons^™

Minimizing Probate-Error Risk, Mark Glover

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Probate-error risk is the possibility that a court will incorrectly assess the authenticity of a will. By prescribing the method courts use to evaluate the authenticity of wills, the law of will-execution allocates probate-error risk between false-positive outcomes and false-negative outcomes. When a court validates an inauthentic will, it creates a false-positive outcome. When a court invalidates an authentic will, it creates a false-negative outcome. Because false-positive outcomes result in the admission to probate of inauthentic wills and false-negative outcomes result in the denial of probate of genuine wills, both can be characterized as probate errors. This framework has been …

Defending Dependent Disclaimers, Katheleen Guzman

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access To Digital Assets Act: Has The Law Caught Up With Technology?, Elizabeth Sy

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deaccessioning: A Pragmatic Approach, Ardis E. Strong

Journal of Law and Policy

Art museums are curators of ideas, preservers of culture, and educators on the evolving aesthetics and morals of society. As such, they play an important role in contemporary society and should be accessible to a wide and diverse audience. One important debate in how museums best serve the public interest involves the museum practice of deaccessioning. Historically, policies governing the proceeds museums receive when they deaccession (or remove) work from their collection have strictly limited the use of these funds to the purchase of new art. This policy is based on the idea that museums hold art for the public …

An Introduction To Mediation For Estate Planners, Alexandra Carter

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation is a voluntary, informal, and confidential discussion in which a neutral facilitator assists two or more parties toward achieving a resolution of the conflict existing between them. As a conflict resolution tool, mediation serves a number of purposes, including providing parties the opportunity “to define and clarify issues, understand different perspectives, identify interests, explore and assess possible solutions, and reach mutually satisfactory agreements, when desired.”

Mediation is a flexible process, and so there can be as many “types” of mediations as there are parties and conflicts. For example, the definition of mediation is broad enough to include a dispute …

"Death Tax" Politics, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

In his Keynote Address "Death Tax" Politics at the October 2, 2015 Boston College Law School and American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Symposium, The Centennial of the Estate and Gift Tax: Perspectives and Recommendations, Michael Graetz describes the fight over the repeal of the estate tax and its current diminished state. Graetz argues that the political battle over the repeal of the estate tax reflects a fundamental challenge to our nation's progressive tax system. This Address concludes that a revitalized estate tax is important for managing the national debt and reducing massive inequalities in wealth.

Toward A Reality-Based Estate Tax, Wendy C. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

Currently, the estate tax does not accurately value the property and transactions that it is meant to cover. Additionally, the marital and charitable deductions do not reflect actual associated transfers, instead skewing their benefits away from their purported beneficiaries. This Article proposes reforming the estate tax by eliminating these sources of unreality and distortion, and to make the current estate tax a reality-based tax. Through six specific proposals, the Article identifies solutions to the problems associated with testamentary transfers, puts forth alternative methods of valuation to prevent gaming of transfer taxes, and offers significant modifications to two deduction provisions.

Property's Immortality, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The law ofpost most-mortem transfers assumes an autonomous individual, free to will their property as they see fit. This Article offers a relational critique of this legal reality, and highlights the implications ofsuch a critique for gender equality. Although property's role in supporting relationships and facilitating cooperation has long been celebrated, post-mortem transfers pose a challenge to relational legal theory. It is commonly held that death puts a stop to all relationships and defies all relational commitments. This Article builds on a different perception of death, and argues that the need to transcend mortality is profoundly relational. Property-related projects can …

Dependent Disclaimers, Katheleen Guzman

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Biologically Biased Beneficence, Jeffrey E. Stake

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Selective Issues In Effective Medicaid Estate Recovery Statutes, Raymond C. O'Brien

Scholarly Articles

Medicaid is a joint federal-state partnership program that provides medical care to the elderly, blind, and disabled poor. Unlike Medicare, Medicaid will pay for long-term care, leading millions of persons in need of such care to “spend-down” income or assets to qualify as sufficiently needy or poor. However, the state can eventually seek recovery of expenditures made through estate recovery programs following the death of both spouses. As it currently stands, states have no choice but to become increasingly vigilant in pursuing private funds in order to pay for Medicaid expenditures. As a result, elderly citizens and their families will …

Irwin V. Gavit: Income Is (Sometimes) In The Eye Of The Beholder, William P. Lapiana

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Study Of Modification And Termination Of Conservation Easements: What The Data Suggest About Appropriate Legal Rules, Gerald Korngold, Semida Munteanu, Lauren Smith

Articles & Chapters

The acquisition of conservation easements by nonprofit organizations (“NPOs”) over the past twenty-five years has revolutionized the preservation of American land. Recently, however, legislatures, courts, practitioners, and commentators have debated whether and how conservation easements should be modified and even terminated. The discussion has almost always been on a theoretical level without empirical grounding and has sometimes generated much heat but little light. The discussion has lacked the necessary empirical context to allow legislatures and courts to thoughtfully develop resolutions to these issues free from sloganeering and posturing.

This article provides and analyzes a previously uncollected dataset that offers guidance …

Wills, Trusts, Guardianships, And Fiduciary Administration, Mary F. Radford

Mercer Law Review

This Article describes selected cases and significant legislation from the period of June 1, 2014 through May 31, 2015 pertaining to Georgia fiduciary law and estate planning.

Doe V. Friedman, Neal Hendel, Anat Baron, Uri Shoham

Translated Opinions

[This abstract is not part of the Court's opinion and is provided for the reader's convenience. It has been translated from a Hebrew version prepared by Nevo Press Ltd. and is used with its kind permission.]

A transgender woman ended her life, and, in documents she left behind, she made clear that she wished for her body to be cremated and that most of her ashes be scattered at sea and some be buried in a place for her memory. In her will she asked that the First Respondent act to execute her wishes – this, among others, because she …

Forfeiting Trust, Deborah S. Gordon

William & Mary Law Review

Over the past two years, a significant number of appellate courts in jurisdictions throughout the country have faced trust provisions that purport to disinherit any beneficiaries who challenge a trustee’s decision making. Such provisions to “secure compliance ... with dispositions of property”—known as “forfeiture,” “no-contest,” “anticontest,” or “penalty” clauses—have appeared in wills for well more than a century. But the trust clauses differ from their testamentary counterparts and thus deserve serious scrutiny in their own right, especially because the abundance of recent cases has led to increasingly inconsistent and haphazard approaches. This Article exposes the problems that trust forfeiture clauses …

Fiduciary Governance, Paul B. Miller, Andrew S. Gold

William & Mary Law Review

The fiduciary relationship is one of the most fundamental legal relationships, and its importance for both public and private law is increasingly recognized. Fiduciary mandates typically involve one person—the fiduciary—administering the affairs or property of other persons—an individual beneficiary or group of beneficiaries. Yet, as we will demonstrate, this is not the only way fiduciary relationships are structured. Most accounts of fiduciary law oversimplify the law because they exclude a categorically different form of fiduciary relationship. A significant set of fiduciary relationships feature governance mandates in which the fiduciary is charged with pursuing abstract purposes rather than the interests of …

Crummey Delivers Another Knockout Punch To The Irs, Phyllis C. Taite

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Special Family And Lifestyle Tax Issues, Helena S. Mock

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Aligning The Stars -- Estate Planning For Entrepreneurs In Interesting Times, Stefan F. Tucker, Mary Ann Mancini, Tammara Langlieb

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.