Category Archives: Succession
‘Less Freedom and More Equality’
Carla Spivack and Deborah Gordon, ‘Donative Freedom, Disrupted’, 91 Brooklyn Law Review (forthcoming, 2026), available at SSRN (5 February 2025). Donative freedom is the guiding principle of inheritance law. This is something that many of us who teach the subject tell students every semester, at the outset of a Wills and Trusts class. We keep […]
Horton, Weisbord and Ryan, ‘Trust Litigation’
ABSTRACT There is a blind spot at the center of American inheritance law. In the late twentieth century, revocable living trusts (rev trusts) replaced wills as the main estate planning tool. More recently, the widespread use of these mechanisms and the unprecedented amount of wealth passing between generations has reportedly caused an increase in trust […]
Frank Hernandez, ‘Inheritance And Indebtedness: The Sole Beneficiary’s Pro Se Battle Against Creditors’
ABSTRACT Creating a will is one of the most important things someone can do to protect the assets they have acquired over their working life and give those assets to their beneficiaries. With the shrinking family size and the rising cost of living, the likelihood of a will having a sole beneficiary also increases. Sole […]
Rzewuski and Rzewuska, ‘The public policy exception as grounds for refusing to recognize or enforce foreign court judgments in succession cases’
ABSTRACT The number of cross-border civil proceedings is on the rise and is likely to increase in the future. The above also applies to succession law regulating the statutory order of succession. Therefore, national courts adjudicating a succession case have to be familiar with and respect foreign laws indicated by the appropriate conflict-of-law rule. Significant […]
Thomas Mitchell, ‘The heirs’ property field: moving from the shadows to the light to enlightened, evidence-based solutions’
ABSTRACT This paper will address the following matters. The first section will address the state of the heirs’ property field prior to 2010 or so. This section will demonstrate that heirs’ property issues were little known for the most part outside of the families who owned or were directly impacted by such ownership; a relatively […]
John Rimmer, ‘“Who then is my child?”’
ABSTRACT It is easy to make assumptions about who is, and who is not, the ‘child’ of an individual. In the past, the main question was whether someone was the legitimate child of another. As society and technology have changed, the meaning of ‘child’ has changed to accommodate such matters as adoption, IVF, surrogacy, and […]
Thomas Gallanis, ‘Time for a New Restatement’
ABSTRACT In February 2025, the author wrote by email to the American Law Institute’s Director, Judge Diane Wood, encouraging the ALI to consider whether the time had come to undertake a new Restatement of the law of trusts. Director Wood replied swiftly and kindly that ‘[t]his possibility had not been on my radar’ but that […]
‘Small Gifts, Big Problems’
Mark Glover, ‘Nominal Bequests’, 59 UC Davis Law Review 731 (2025). When I read the premise of Mark Glover’s terrific new article ‘Nominal Bequests’ – that some small-dollar gifts are problematic – I couldn’t help wonder whether it was a kind of stunt, like writing a novel without using the letter ‘e’. What could be […]
Goffe and Mandel, ‘Resolution of family inheritance, succession and trust disputes in the US: judicial and nonjudicial approaches’
ABSTRACT In the United States, family trust controversies can be resolved through both judicial and nonjudicial methods. The Uniform Trust Code, enacted in 2000, changed common law to allow nonjudicial settlement agreements, with six primary methods for modifying irrevocable trusts: using existing trust powers, decanting, nonjudicial settlement agreements (NJSAs), merger, and powers of appointment. Washington […]
Smith and Davis, ‘Al-Thani and another v Al Thani and others [2024] UKPC 35 – creative arguments and the transmissibility of shares following the death of a shareholder’
ABSTRACT This article discusses the recent decision of the Privy Council in Al-Thani & anr v Al Thani & ors [2024] UKPC 35, which considers whether shares are classified as moveable or immovable property under the law of the British Virgin Islands and the implications of this on their transmissibility following the death of a […]