For more than 150 years, companies called “heir hunters” have operated in the shadows of the court system. Heir hunters monitor probate filings to identify intestate decedents who have missing or unknown relatives. They then perform genealogical research, locate the decedent's kin, and offer...

For decades, the Supreme Court has expanded the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and companies have placed arbitration clauses in hundreds of millions of contracts. This Article examines a less obvious way in which arbitration's tendrils are growing. Once, even the broadest arbitration provisions...

For decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has insisted that forcing a plaintiff to arbitrate — rather than allowing her to litigate — does not affect the outcome of a dispute. Recently, the Court has invoked this “parity assumption” to expand arbitral jurisdiction. Reasoning that it does not...

Californians will inherit hundreds of billions of dollars in the next two decades. Yet Probate Code section 21350(a)(6) - the state's unique quot;care custodianquot; provision - casts a long shadow over this unprecedented transfer of wealth. Section 21350 creates a virtually unrebuttable...

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...

The rules that govern the creation of an estate plan are in flux. Courts once demanded strict adherence to the Wills Act. Yet this legacy of hyper-vigilance is waning, as the Uniform Probate Code, the Restatement (Third) of Property, and ten states have adopted the harmless error rule....

In the United States, every reported case grappling with the validity of an arbitration clause in a donative trust shares the assumption that state law governs. The same is true of the vast majority of scholarship on the topic. Conversely, this chapter in Arbitration of Internal Trust Disputes:...

Although most testators hire lawyers, others draft their own wills. Some try to comply with the Wills Act, which requires testamentary instruments to be signed by the testator and by two witnesses. Some create holographic wills, which are valid in about half of American states, and must be in...

This invited contribution to the DePaul Law Review's Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy examines 5,883 cases initiated by employees in the American Arbitration Association between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2013. Its goal is to shed light on the state of employment arbitration...