Estates Law (ESGL)

ESGL 0338. Estate Administration. (2 Credits)

The fundamentals of administration of decedent’s estates, including probate and contested probate; establishing distributees in administration proceedings; appointment and qualification of fiduciaries; powers and duties of fiduciaries; marshaling decedent’s assets; discovery proceedings; claims against estate; construction of will; determining validity of right of election; tax apportionment; preparation of formal accounting; attorney’s fees; setting up a trust; and distribution.

Attributes: JD, LLM.

ESGL 0521. Trusts and Wills. (3 or 4 Credits)

The study of the law of wills and trusts is a course of many rules. This course is designed to provide a framework for organizing and thinking about the rules, and the cases that apply them, around four basic concepts: authenticity; change over time; trust; and social context. <p> With respect to authenticity, this course will explore the rules that address what we can call “formal authenticity” - rules governing whether a document is authentic, such as rules governing the execution of wills, trusts, powers of attorney, deeds and beneficiary designations. The second type of authenticity this course will examine is the rules that address what we can call “substantive authenticity” - rules that examine whether the terms of the document express the true intentions of the transferor. The course will cover the rules that address the capacity of the transferor, whether undue influence was exerted, or whether the transferor was suffering from an insane delusion. We will also examine the rules that provide guidance on how to find the meaning of ambiguous terms in a document, and when we can look beyond the words of the document to try to find meaning in the circumstances under which the document was created. <p> This course will also examine the rules in the context of the issues raised by changes in circumstances over time - such as the birth or death, or marriage or divorce of intended beneficiaries. The laws governing inheritance and the rules relating to the modification of provisions of wills and trusts and the law of future interests will also be covered. <p> Since the transferor cannot ensure that the provisions of their estate plan are carried out after they die, this course will also examine the rules governing the duties of the fiduciary - the person or persons named to implement the transferor's instructions, and will explore what it means to be a fiduciary with the responsibility to carry out those instructions with complete fidelity to those persons who are interested without concern for the fiduciary’s own interests. There are many rules explaining how fiduciaries are to behave and the consequences of not following the rules, all of which are intended to enforce the trust the transferor placed in the fiduciary. <p> This course will also analyze the law of wills and trusts in our current societal context. Attitudes towards wealth and especially the transmission of wealth are an important part of the culture of any society and have changed over time. Changing ideas of what constitutes a family and how families are created, and outside of the family context, transmissions of wealth that are intended to benefit society—a gift for a charitable purposes—are governed by laws that are defined by society. Sometimes, the outcome of a particular wealth transfer issue is influenced by what society thinks is a "legitimate" or "illegitimate" purpose at a particular time.

Attributes: JD, LLM, LMCO.