Surrogate Court dockets are filled with cases involving family members fighting over the assets and intentions of a deceased parent or spouse. "Probate Wars of the Rich & Famous: An Insider's Guide to Estate Planning and Probate Litigation" tracks the estate litigation cases of Anna Nicole Smith, Brooke Astor, Michael Jackson, Nina Wang, Jerry Garcia and Leona Helmsley and identifies the five universal factors that caused such disputes. Each chapter provides estate planning insights designed to help individuals plan their estates without causing litigation. If, however, probate litigation cannot be avoided, the book also provides invaluable lessons about undue influence claims, how to remove a fiduciary, demanding an estate accounting and claims seeking to set aside lifetime transfers that undermined the decedents intentions. Few - if any - estate planning books utilize colorful celebrity accounts to provide meaningful insights and actionable advice.

The Wills and Inheritance Protocol sets out the Law Society's preferred practice in will drafting, probate and estate administration and supports the provision of consistent and high quality services by legal practices. The Protocol aims to raise standards of client care and service by: improving communication between practices, clients and beneficiaries increasing transparency and therefore understanding of the necessary processes encouraging practices to agree timescales and service levels with clients. Meeting the obligations of the Protocol is the cornerstone of the new Wills and Inheritance Quality Scheme and will also help all legal practices to: demonstrate high standards of practice to clients and others meet legal requirements achieve compliance with outcomes-focused regulation provide a consistent level of service. This book contains the full text of the Protocol version 1.0 and an appendix with relevant statutory extracts and guidance on good practice.

The number of disputes involving trusts has risen significantly in recent years. Many disputes take place in the international environment and cross-border jurisdictional issues may arise. These disputes often involve large sums of money, impacting significantly on family relations. The handling of such disputes requires specialist skills and knowledge, including an understanding of how and why private trusts are established and administered and the problems that can arise; an awareness of the cross-jurisdictional issues that may be relevant; and the ability to identify practical legal solutions to the dispute that are compliant with trust principles. International Trust Disputes provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment of this topic. Acting as a specialist guide for practitioners, it offers a survey of the special considerations that may arise with regard to trust disputes as well as a definitive guide to the issues which may be encountered in the jurisdictions where disputes are most likely to take place.

Increasing numbers of people have connections with one country, but live and work in another, frequently owning property or investments in several countries. People with lifelong or subsequently developed impairments of capacity move cross-border or have property or family interests or connections spread across different jurisdictions. This new work fills a gap in a specialist market for a detailed work advising lawyers on all the considerations in these situations. The book provides a clear, comprehensive, and unique overview of all relevant capacity and private international law issues, and the existing solutions in common law and civil law jurisdictions and under Hague Convention XXXV. It sets out the existing law of various important jurisdictions, including detailed chapters on the constituent parts of the UK, Ireland, Jersey, the Isle of Man and the Hague 35 states; and shorter chapters on 26 Non-Hague states and those within federal states, including coverage of the United States, several Australian and Canadian states, and a number of other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Containing a number of helpful case studies and flowcharts, the book draws upon the expertise of the editors in their respective fields, together with detailed contributions from expert practitioners and academics from each relevant jurisdiction. All the editors and many of the contributors and correspondents are members of STEP.

The resulting trust has received little attention in recent years and this may be because, until relatively recently, the law relating to resulting trusts was thought to be settled and uncontroversial. Most of the current academic writing about resulting trusts is found in the established textbooks on equity and trusts, but these tend to provide little more than catalogues of the situations in which resulting trusts arise. There is, however, very little consensus on the principle by which the resulting trust operates, including the fundamental question whether it arises by opertaion of law or depends on the presumed intention to create a trust. This book examines the true nature of the resulting trust and the question whether the trusts brought into being to reverse unjust enrichment should not include resulting trusts. It then considers whether, when resulting trusts are properly understood, it does turn out that it is through the resulting trust that equity makes its principle contribution to reversing unjust enrichment. This book examines principally the case law of the UK, Canada and Australia, and it also makes reference to the views of academic commentators as found in the standard texts and law journals.

Joyce Rogers sheds new light upon Shakespeare's last public words through her study of medieval and Renaissance ecclesiastical and testamentary laws and custom. Professor Rogers provides extensive background material on English legal history and shows that the legal documents of the time do give legal answer to the doubts and speculations that have grown up around Shakespeare's will. She shows how the will is replete with elements of civil and common as well as ecclesiastical law and custom, making more understandable the disputed points of Shakespeare's will, and establishing that the will was as correct, incontestable, and conventional as possible.

The main thrust of the book, however, is not on the law as such. It is on how the law was used by Shakespeare to serve the best interests and needs of the women and children in his family as well as the friends named therein. As such, the book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Elizabethan society and to all Shakespearean scholars.

This book is one of the first to link company law to the law of succession by concentrating on family businesses. It shows that, to understand the legal framework underlying the daily operations of family businesses, one needs legal analysis, empirical data, psychological and sociological knowledge. The book works on the premise that, since many businesses have been founded by families, practitioners need to develop an understanding of the legal background of such businesses and build up experience to be able to create contracts, trusts, foundations and other legal mechanisms to give shape to systems and procedures for the transfer of shares and control within the family. Comparing the national legal order, techniques, and mechanisms in a range of countries, the book examines parallel developments in these fields of law across the world. Finally, it demonstrates the room for companies, shareholders and the members of a family to develop individual solutions within the legal framework for transferring businesses and shares to the next generation.

"An invaluable tool to help you collect the information your attorney needs." --Michael Cragun, Utah State Tax Commissioner An Accessible Guide to Estate Planning With Estate Planning (in Plain English)(R), readers will learn to comprehend the legal jargon and navigate the complex rules involved in preparing one's estate. The authors provide clear information and cite actual cases to help readers approach the process with the confidence and knowledge they need to make the best decisions for their heirs. Chapters discuss important topics such as: Estate plans, wills, and a variety of trusts Guardians, powers of attorney, advance directives, and other essential documents Life insurance Digital assets Gifts Tax considerations Avoiding probate Identifying and caring for estate property Settling business assets Finding a lawyer An invaluable reference for those preparing their estates and for their families, Estate Planning (in Plain English)(R)will enable readers to take the necessary steps to preserve their legacies.

Succession, Wills and Probate is an ideal textbook for those taking an undergraduate course in this surprisingly vibrant subject, and also provides a clear and comprehensive introduction for professionals. Against an account of the main social and political themes of succession law, the book gives detailed explanations of core topics such as alternatives to wills and the making, altering and revocation of wills. It also explains personal representatives and how they should deal with a deceased person's estate and interpret and implement the will. Gifts may fail, estates may be insolvent or a person may die intestate, without a will at all. Increasingly relatives and others seek to challenge the will, for example on the grounds of the testator's capacity or under the law of family provision. This third edition is edited, updated and revised to take account of new legislation and case law across all the relevant issues, including a new final chapter dealing with the potentially contentious issues that are becoming more central to professional work in the field of succession.

In every Western democracy today, inheritances have a very profound influence on people's lives. This motivates renewed scholarship on inheritance law by philosophy and the legal sciences. The present volume aims to contribute to some ongoing areas of inquiry while also filling some gaps in research. It is organized in a highly interdisciplinary way. In the thirteen chapters of the book, written by outstanding philosophers and legal scholars, the following questions, among others, are discussed: What is the nature of the right to bequeath? What are the social functions of bequest and inheritance? What arguments concerning justice have philosophers and legal scholars advanced in favour or against practices of bequest and inheritance? How should we think about taxing the wealth transfers that occur in bequest and inheritance? In discussing these questions, the authors break new ground and offer much needed insight into several related domains, such as the philosophy of law; legal theory; general and applied ethics; social and political philosophy; theories of justice; and the history of legal, political, and economic thought. This book will be of great interest to scholars in these areas as well as policy-makers.

Wealth can be transferred on death in a number of different ways, most commonly by will. Yet a person can also use a variety of other means to benefit someone on death. Examples include donationes mortis causa, joint tenancies, trusts, life-insurance contracts and nominations in pension and retirement plans. In the US, these modes of transfer are grouped under the category of 'will-substitutes' and are generally treated as testamentary dispositions. Much has been written about the effect of the use of will-substitutes in the US, but little is generally known about developments in other jurisdictions. For the first time, this collection of contributions looks at will-substitutes from a comparative perspective. It examines mechanisms that pass wealth on death across a number of common law, civil law and mixed legal jurisdictions, and explores the rationale behind their use. It analyses them from different viewpoints, including those of owners of businesses, investors, as well as creditors, family members and dependants. The aims of the volume are to show the complexity and dynamics of wealth transfers on death across jurisdictions, to identify patterns between jurisdictions, and to report the attitudes towards the different modes of transfer in light of their utility and the potential frictions they give rise to with policies and principles underpinning current laws.

Planning how to pass your estate on doesn't have to mean complications, legal jargon and huge bills. "Wills, Probate and Inheritance Tax For Dummies, 2nd Edition" takes you through the process step-by-step and gives you all the information you need to ensure that your affairs are left in good order. It shows you how to plan and write your will, minimise the stress of probate, and ensure that your nearest and dearest are protected from a large inheritance tax bill.

Discover how to: Decide if a will is right for you Value your assets Leave your home through a will Appoint executors and trustees Choose beneficiaries Draw up a DIY will Work out how inheritance tax works and if you're liable to it Find out what can and can't be taxed

The fate of the dead is a compelling and emotive subject, which also raises increasingly complex legal questions. This book focuses on the substantive laws around disposal of the recently deceased and associated issues around their post-mortem fate. It looks primarily at the laws in England and Wales but also offers a comparative approach, drawing heavily on material from other common law jurisdictions including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. The book provides an in-depth, contextual and comparative analysis of the substantive laws and policy issues around corpse disposal, exhumation and the posthumous treatment of the dead, including commemoration. Topics covered include: the legal frameworks around burial, cremation and other disposal methods; the hierarchy of persons who have a legal duty to dispose of the dead and who are entitled to possession of the deceased's remains; offences against the dead; family burial disputes, and the legal status of burial instructions; the posthumous use of donated bodily material; and the rules around disinterment, and creating an appropriate memorial. A key theme of the book will be to look at the manner in which conflicts involving the dead are becoming increasingly common in secular, multi-cultural societies where the traditional nuclear family model is no longer the norm, and how such legal contests are resolved by courts. As the first comprehensive survey of the laws in this area for decades, this book will be of use to academics, lawyers and judges adjudicating on issues around the fate of the dead, as well as the death industry and funeral service providers.

Secure your financial and online assets with MemoryBanc Your Workbook For Organizing Life. Today, more than $58 billion is sitting with state and federal treasurers representing bank accounts, insurance, tax returns, and retirement accounts that were lost in the shuffle of a move, personal crisis, or death. Nearly half of adults over forty can expect to face a short-term disability before they reach sixty-five and 70 percent of American's over sixty-five will need three years of care and support. MemoryBanc makes it easy to document accounts, usernames, and medical history so they can be easily found or shared should they ever be needed by a spouse or loved one. It also helps couples that divide and conquer stay on the same page and gives individuals a way to easily hand over important information should it ever be needed. With the help of MemoryBanc, readers no longer have to store their information in their heads, on their phones, in a file, or under a keyboard-they now have one place that captures it all. Find out how easily it is to secure your assets with MemoryBanc Your Workbook For Organizing Life.

Donations, Inheritance and Property in the Nordic and Western World from Late Antiquity until Today presents an examination of Nordic donation and gift-giving practices in the Nordic and Western world, beginning in late Antiquity and extending through to the present day. Through chapters contributed by leading international researchers, this book explores the changing legal, social and religious frameworks that shape how donations and gifts are given. In addition to donations to ecclesiastical, charitable and cultural institutions, this books also highlights the sociolegal challenges and the tensions that can occur as a result of transferring property, including answering key questions such as who has a right to what. It also presents, for the first time, an insight into the dynamics of donations and the interplay between individual motivations, strategic behaviour and the legal setting of inheritance law. Offering a broad chronological and European perspective and including a wide range of illuminating case studies Donations, Inheritance and Property in the Nordic and Western World from Late Antiquity until Today is ideal for students of Nordic and European legal and social history.

Yvonne Pitts explores inheritance practices by focusing on nineteenth-century testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills. These disappointed heirs claimed that their departed relative lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. These inheritance disputes crisscrossed a variety of legal and cultural terrains, including ordinary people's understandings of what constituted insanity and justice, medical experts' attempts to infuse law with science, and the independence claims of women. Pitts uncovers the contradictions in the body of law that explicitly protected free will while simultaneously reinforcing the primacy of blood in mediating claims to inherited property. By anchoring the study in local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that capacity was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values about family, race relations, and rationality. These concepts evolved as Kentucky's legal culture mutated as the state transitioned from a conflicted border state with slaves to a developing free-labor, industrializing economy.

With cross-border successions becoming increasingly common in the context of the European Union, this timely book offers a systematic practical analysis of how cross-border successions should be treated, including examination of which courts may establish jurisdiction over succession disputes and which law governs such disputes. Key Features: Practical analysis of the provisions of the EU Succession Regulation Consideration of issues at the intersection between cross-border successions and taxation Analysis of the specificities of the European Certificate of Succession and its interface with national laws Study of cross-border successions in the context of both estate planning and the opening and liquidation of a succession Contextualization of the EU Succession Regulation in the framework of the national law and practice of several EU Member States A comprehensive study of EU cross-border succession law with global reach, this book is an invaluable source of reference and guidance for practitioners specialising in estate planning, family law and property law, including judges, notaries, tax specialists and lawyers. Scholars of European succession law and conflict of laws will also find this book's critical analysis an instrumental tool in their research.

Clignet's analysis of inheritance patterns in modern America is the fi rst sustained treatment of the subject by a sociologist. Clignet shows that even today inheritance serves to perpetuate both familial wealth and familial relations. He examines what leads decedents to chose particular legal instruments (wills, trusts, insurance policies, gifts "inter vivos") and how, in turn, the instrument chosen helps explain the extent and the form of inequalities in bequests, of a result of the gender or matrimonial status of the beneficiaries.

The author's major is to identify and explain the most signifi cant sources of variations in the amount and the direction of transfers of wealth after death in the United States. He uses two kinds of primary data: estate tax returns fi led by a sample of male and female benefi ciaries to estates in 1920 and 1944, representing two successive generations of estate transfers, and publicly recorded legal instruments such as wills and trusts. In addition, Clignet draws widely on secondary sources in the fi elds of anthropology, economics, and history. His fi ndings reflect substantive and methodological concerns. Th e analysis underlines the need to rethink the sociology of generational bonds, as it is informed by age and gender.

"Death, Deeds, and Descendants" underscores the variety of forms of inequality that bequests take and highlights the complexity of interrelations between the cultures of the decedents' nationalities and issues like occupation and gender. Inheritance is viewed as a way of illuminating the subtle tensions between continuity and change in American society. This book is an important contribution to the study of the relationship between sociology of the family and sociology of social stratification.

While continental and comparative lawyers have recently rediscovered succession law as an area of immense practical importance deserving greater academic attention, it is still a neglected field in England. This book aims to reinvigorate the English debate. It brings together contributions by leading academics and practitioners engaging with topical issues as well as questions of fundamental importance in succession law and estate planning. The book will be of interest to both academics and practitioners working in the field, and to non-English comparative lawyers.

An authoritative, accessible guide to administering an estate The majority of applications for probate that follow someone's death can be dealt with inexpensively by any reasonably intelligent person with time available and a little guidance. This easy-to-follow book clearly explains all the information you need to administer the deceased's estate, from dealing with the urgent practical matters to preparing and submitting the relevant forms, paying inheritance tax, and distributing the estate. You'll find specimen forms and letters and a list of useful addresses that will enable you to deal with it all yourself. Contents: Preface; 1. What is probate, when is it necessary and what is involved? 2. Who can and should wind up the estate; 3. Getting started; 4. Next steps; 5. From preparing and submitting the forms to distributing the estate; 6. Distributing the estate; Appendices: 1. Specimen forms and letters; 2. Useful addresses; 3. Glossary; Index.

Routledge QandAs give you the tools to practice and refine your exam technique, showing you how to apply your knowledge to maximum effect in an exam situation. Each book contains essay and problem-based questions on the most commonly examined topics, complete with expert guidance and fully worked model answers that help you to: Plan your revision: introducing how best to approach revision in each subject Know what examiners are looking for: identifying and explaining the main elements of each question to help you understand the best approach providing marker annotation to show how examiners will read your answer Gain marks, and avoid common errors: identifying common pitfalls students encounter in class and in assessment providing revision advice to help you aim higher in essays and exams Understand and remember the law: using diagrams as overviews for each answer to demonstrate how the law fits together The series is also supported by an online resource that allows you to test your progress during the run-up to exams. Features include: multiple choice questions, bonus QandAs and podcasts. www.routledge.com/cw/revision