Category Archives: Succession
Reid Weisbord, ‘Heirs Property: An Examination of Probate Costs and the Costs of Postmortem Probate Inaction’
ABSTRACT ‘Heirs property’ describes a legal limbo that occurs when multiple heirs or will beneficiaries inherit real property as tenants-in-common without promptly probating the estate to transfer marketable title out of the decedent’s name. While other areas of probate law have demonstrated remarkable sophistication by supplying battle-tested default rules as contingencies for inaction, lawmakers have […]
Harbinja, Morse and Edwards, ‘Digital Remains and Post-mortem Privacy in the UK: What do users want?’
ABSTRACT The information age has led to extensive personal data aggregation, posing various challenges for posthumous privacy and digital remains. Users are often unaware of tools for managing their digital remains, laws in the area are predominantly silent or inadequate, and the scholarship has argued for appropriate legal and technological solutions. Our study of 1,766 […]
Richardson and Miller, ‘Solutions for Heirs Property Owners’
ABSTRACT What are some solutions for heirs property owners? An offered solution assumes that there is a problem, and the first step must be clearly defining the problem. But, as the authors explain, the term ‘heirs property’ proves difficult to define because of the vast number and scope of heirs property scenarios. Stated very simply, […]
‘Leaving it all to the dog: Pet inheritance and disputes’
When fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld died in 2019, it was heavily reported that he left a sizeable estate to his blue-cream tortie Birman cat named Choupette. His former housekeeper, Françoise Caçote, was directed to care for the feline along with $1.5 million. After this, leaving behind money for animals became a hot topic … (more) […]
‘Constructive Trusts and Cremated Remains’
Kate Falconer, ‘Trusts over Cremated Ashes’, 15 Journal of Equity 283 (2021), available at SSRN (December 1, 2021). The ‘law of the dead’ or the law of human remains is regarded as an emerging field of study that considers rights to physical possession of the deceased and control over their disposition. In the United States, […]
Mark Glover, ‘Fragmented Wills’
ABSTRACT A will typically is a single document that is prepared by a testator at one time. Not all wills are typical, though. A will can comprise multiple documents that are prepared at different times during the testator’s life. This scenario occurs when a testator executes an initial will and then later executes one or […]
de Mestre and Kha, ‘Testamentary undue influence in Australia: should it be reformed?’
ABSTRACT Testamentary undue influence is a doctrine distinct from the equitable doctrine of undue influence. The requirements to prove testamentary undue influence have caused academic and judicial criticism questioning whether the doctrine adequately safeguards the vulnerable testator. As the aged population increases, it is increasingly important to re-examine the level of protection afforded by the […]
David Waddilove, ‘Aspects of Equity in 1600: Wills, Forfeitures, and Trusts’
ABSTRACT The Court of Chancery in 1600 stood somewhere on the bridge between medieval dispenser of ad-hoc justice and sclerotically rigid Regency court of punctilio. Equity was in an uncertain state, no longer unpredictably free-form, but not yet driven to the regularity of fully precedential lawlikeness. At the time, the Great Seal was in the […]
Mitchelle Musyoka, ‘Regulation of Electronic Wills in Kenya: A Case for Reform?’
ABSTRACT We live in what has been termed ‘a quicksilver technological environment’. Regardless of perceived ethical or enforcement limitations, laws have become increasingly significant in applying general principles to the electronic environment. Some people will argue that ‘technology can be just as powerful as the law in constraining or regulating digital activity’. Legal technology has […]
‘Announcement of Conference Symposium and Call for Proposals – Inheritance Inequality’
We are pleased to announce a conference on ‘Inheritance Inequality’ (the Fifth Biennial Conference on Critical Trusts and Estates). The conference will take place on Friday September 27 and Saturday September 28, 2024 at Drexel University’s Thomas R Kline School of Law, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and will be sponsored by the Drexel Law Review. The […]