INTRODUCTION
Louisiana is in the midst of a war – a quiet and cold ‘civil’ war between traditional forces of inheritance law that bring about the orderly transfer of property at death and the rogue forces of inter-vivos relations that have final effect at death. The former is the domain of traditional civilian succession law, while the latter is the realm of nonprobate transfers. To be sure, nonprobate transfers are not new. They began to arise as a separate institution in the 1950s and were well established and in high demand and use by the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Life insurance, which is discussed elsewhere, originated much earlier and remains one of the most popular nonprobate transfers. Other institutions have followed suit, and now it is commonplace to speak of and discuss nonprobate transfers (or will substitutes) as a category of their own, even though there is still today not a cohesive (or coherent) body of law that regulates all nonprobate devices. The subjects of this work, payable-on-death bank accounts (PODs or POD accounts) and transfer-on-death brokerage accounts (TODs or TOD accounts), are two more examples of nonprobate transfers …
Ronald J Scalise Jr, The Nonprobate ‘Civil’ War in Louisiana, Part I: PODs and TODs, OMG!, 85 Louisiana Law Review (2025).
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