Category Archives: Succession
Giuliana Perrone, ‘Rehearsals for Reparations’
ABSTRACT This article considers a subset of lawsuits in which emancipated people sued to have their enslavers’ bequests to them honored. It contends that we should see these suits as contests over reparations. By exploring this unappreciated history, this article argues that enslavers themselves believed reparations were due and were willing to pay them, that […]
Goodtime Chimnecherem Okara, ‘Scotland in the Forefront of Property Law Reforms in the UK: Potential Implications for the Scottish People’
ABSTRACT The Scottish Government has taken steps to revolutionise its body of law on ‘trust and succession’ and housing. The recent Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Act 2024 has severally impacted the issues of appointment and removal of trustees, fiduciary duties of trustees, rights of beneficiaries, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investments in Scotland; while […]
‘When property held “in trust” is not a trust: the decision in Nazir v Begum [2024] EWHC 378′
At first blush the decision of Freedman J in Nazir v Begum [2024] EWHC 378 (KB) appears counterintuitive. Section 33(1) of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 (‘AEA’) states that: ‘On the death of a person intestate as to any real or personal estate, that estate shall be held in trust by his personal representatives […]
‘The Wealth Planning Climate’
Trace Brooks, ‘Incorporating Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability into Estate Planning Through Conservation Easements’, 49 ACTEC Law Journal 1 (2023); Carla Spivack, ‘Estate Planning for the Apocalypse’, 49 ACTEC Law Journal 85 (2023). Climate change and environmental justice are topics that thread through and are pushing the boundaries of legal inquiry in multiple doctrinal areas. […]
‘Climate Conscious Advocacy and Perpetual Burdens’
Carla Spivack, ‘Estate Planning for the Apocalypse’, 49 ACTEC Law Journal 85 (2023). A billionaire invests in human cryopreservation so that his head may be preserved in hopes of his entire person being revived later. His head, and his favorite dog, will be preserved at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit in a cylindrical tank filled with […]
Victoria Haneman, ‘The Law of Digital Resurrection’
ABSTRACT The digital right to be dead has yet to be recognized as an important legal right. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and nanotechnology have progressed to the point that personal data can be used to resurrect the deceased in digital form with appearance, voice, emotion, and memory recreated to allow interaction with a digital app, […]
Gus Tamborello, ‘If You Kill Your Honey, Don’t Expect the Money: the Rights of a Killer in Texas to Share in His Victim’s Estate’
I. DEATH BY SLEDGEHAMMER On October 25, 2013, Steven and Laquita Lawrence left their home in Fort Bend County, Texas to purchase a new phone for their son, and only child, twenty-seven-year-old, Ross Patrick Lawrence. Ross had recently returned home from Burbank, California, where he had relocated, purportedly to pursue a career in movie production. […]
Allison Tait, ‘The Haunting of Wealth Law’
ABSTRACT Wealth law is full of ghosts, ghosts everywhere all at once. As a form of both preservation and disruption, a form of continuance as well as a form of interruption, ghosts are reminders of the past in its multiple forms. But they are also figures that prompt consideration of the present as well as […]
Allison Tait, ‘Family Property over Time’
ABSTRACT Family property, as the other chapters in this volume have demonstrated, comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and forms according to jurisdiction. Legal geography helps map out contours and comparisons with respect to family and marital property and the ‘where’ matters greatly as it shapes the rules. But while space and location play […]
Mark Glover, ‘Absent Heirs’
ABSTRACT The whereabouts of a decedent’s heirs are sometimes unknown, and consequently some inheritances go unclaimed. Generally, most states regulate unclaimed inheritances by naming a custodian to safekeep the inheritance, and if the absent heir fails to claim it within a prescribed time, then the inheritance escheats to the state. The specifics of the law, […]