This Article explores the problem of construing what I term “defective catastrophe clauses” in wills. Defective catastrophe clauses provide for the contingency that a beneficiary will die simultaneously, or in a common calamity, with the testator but neglect to allow for the possibility that...

By tradition, gifts, wills, and contracts are formalized according to protocols established within each legal category. This Article examines the policies that underlie these "formalizing rules" and concludes that the utility of those rules depends fundamentally on the background conditions...

The problem of revival arises when a testator executes a first will, subsequently executes a second will that functions to revoke the first one by subsequent executed writing, and then later revokes the second will by act. Does this sequence of events reinstate the first will (“revival”) or...

This Article argues that lawmakers ought to recategorize inheritance law and contracts law as cognate bodies of doctrine within a larger genus of transfers law. The Article proceeds to examine comparatively the justifications for freedom of contracts and freedom of testation, concluding that...

Whereas benefactors typically create trusts that provide for one or more individuals, some instead create trusts to accomplish or to promote purposes. Historically, trust law divided purpose trusts into a trio of categories, based on the sort of purpose the benefactor had in mind. Trusts for...

This Article explores the problems that arise when a will fails to dispose of an individual's entire estate, so that she dies partially testate and partially intestate. The questions then raised include (1) whether provisions contained in the will purporting to redefine the individual's...

This Article addresses rules designed to protect children from unintentional disinheritance. The Article examines the problem in the abstract and in the concrete, assessing the merits of the twin theories — mistaken omission and failure to account for changed circumstances — on which...

The beneficiary of an inheritance has the right to disclaim (i.e., decline) it, within limits ordinarily set by state law. This Article examines situations where a beneficiary’s right to disclaim might instead be governed by federal law, as a matter of both existing doctrine and public policy....

In this essay, written for the teaching issue of the SLU Law Journal, I address the problem of how best to focus a course in Wills and Trusts in light of the fact that the applicable rules vary widely from state to state. This legal heterogeneity makes generalization about the “laws” of...

This Article explores the panoply of state-of-mind rules in inheritance law. In areas of law concerned with wrongdoing, consideration of mental states achieves specific deterrence and moral justice. By comparison, in the inheritance realm, I argue that consideration of mental states can serve to...