Category Archives: Succession
‘The Disruptive Potential of Blockchain in the Law of Wills’
Bridget J Crawford, Blockchain Wills, 95 Indiana Law Journal 735 (2020), available at SSRN. Disruptive technologies, like the Internet, often drive new social and organizational arrangements: we now enjoy global interconnectedness and an ease of communication that was previously the stuff of speculative fiction. Blockchain technology has the potential to be similarly transformative, with the […]
Susan Gary, ‘The Electronic Wills Act: Facing the Inevitable’
ABSTRACT In response to increasing legislative activity involving electronic wills, in 2017 the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) appointed the Drafting Committee on Uniform Electronic Wills Act to develop a uniform act providing rules governing the execution of electronic wills. The committee strove to create a statute that would be consistent with existing wills laws but […]
Reginald Nii Odoi, ‘Contested Wills and Testaments in Ghana: Exploring the Legal Claim for Reasonable Provision for Dependants’
ABSTRACT It is certain that human life is not perpetual and surely does come to an end. That notwithstanding, during one’s lifetime, several properties whether movable and/or immovable are acquired but cannot be carried along into the afterlife. Thus, the Ghanaian law and the Common law in general allows persons to execute Wills as the […]
Purser, Cockburn and Crawford, ‘Wills Formalities Beyond COVID-19: An Australian-United States Perspective’
ABSTRACT Executing a valid will during the COVID-19 pandemic can be difficult, given various economic and public health restrictions, including social distancing and lockdowns. For that reason, many states in Australia and the United States have implemented emergency measures to facilitate valid will-making during the pandemic. When societies can begin to look forward, the question […]
Antoni Vaquer, ‘Disinheritance in an Ageing Society’
ABSTRACT Disinheritance has a double meaning. In common law systems, the etymological sense prevails: disinheritance means denying someone from a share of a certain decedent’s succession. In civil law systems, disinheritance means deprivation of the compulsory share. This paper, combining both senses of disinheritance, principally analyses mechanisms that exclude relatives from the list of kin […]
Crawford, Purser and Cockburn, ‘Post-Pandemic Wills’
ABSTRACT The global pandemic caused by COVID-19 has brought new focus to human mortality. The virus concomitantly has reminded many people that they need to have a will or otherwise make plans for the transmission of their property at death. Yet stay-at-home orders and social distancing recommendations make it difficult or impossible to comply with […]
‘Data on Testacy and Intestacy in Florida’
“Filtered by my admitted soft spot for scholars who engage in the hard, unglamorous, and often under-appreciated tasks incident to data creation/collection, a recent paper taking an initial descriptive cut at some archival probate data caught my eye …” (more) [Michael Heise, Empirical Legal Studies, 22 October] First posted 2020-10-23 15:08:32
Mariusz Załucki, ‘Evidentiary function of the provisions on the form of wills in the contemporary succession law: is the complete abandonment of formalism possible?’
ABSTRACT In succession law, the formalism of legal acts has grown to its limits. There is a rule in all democratic legal systems according to which only a will created in accordance with the framework set by the legislator can cause legal effects. The task of such regulations is described by the doctrine in four […]
Richard Hedlund, ‘The end to testamentary freedom’
ABSTRACT Total testamentary freedom in English law came to an end with the passage of the Inheritance (Family Provision) Act 1938, since replaced by the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. The Act introduced the family provision rule, which allows disinherited family members to apply to court for a financial award out of […]
Horto and Weisbord, ‘Inheritance Crimes’
ABSTRACT The civil justice system has struggled to resolve disputes over end-of-life transfers. The two most common grounds for challenging the validity of a gift, will, or trust – mental incapacity and undue influence – are vague, hinge on the state of mind of a dead person, and allow factfinders to substitute their own norms […]