Wills, Trusts, and Estates (Casebook) (Casebook) (Hardcover)

by Jesse Dukeminier (Editor), Stanley M. Johanson (Editor), James M. Lindgren (Editor), Robert H. Sitkoff (Editor)
Key Phrases: appointive property, farm scene painting, nonvested property interest, New York, United States, Uniform Probate Code (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
Regarded as one of the best casebooks available for any course, this comprehensive text combines interesting cases, well-tailored notes, and a clear organization into an excellent teaching tool.

The new Seventh Edition retains the late Jesse Dukeminier’s unique blend of wit, erudition, insight, and playfulness and covers all the key topics in a logical, clear organization. Included are interesting cases that are not only fun to read, but fun for professors to teach as well. Cases are enhanced and connected to broader legal principles by well-written notes, questions, and problems and cartoons, illustrations, and photographs provide humorous interruptions and visual commentary at appropriate places within the text. New authors James Lindgren and Robert Sitkoff updated the book to reflect legal change while remaining careful to retain the same interesting mix of cases, engaging notes and flexible organization that makes this a highly successful casebook. Additions and improvements to the previous edition include due attention to new developments in law reform by the ALI and NCCUSL such as: Restatement Third, Trusts (2003, Uniform Trust Code (2000) including proposed 2004 amendments, Restatement (Third) of Property: Wills and Other Donative Transfers (2001, 2003)and Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interests Act (2002. Attention is given to ongoing developments in the law such as inheritance rights of posthumously conceived children, standing of donors in suits against the trustees of charitable trusts, the rise of domestic offshore self-settled spendthrift trusts, the erosion of the rule against perpetuities and the rise of the perpetual, generation-skipping trust. There is enhanced coverage of increasingly important topics such as fiduciary administration and trust investment law (including modern portfolio theory, diversification, the principal and income problem, and measuring damages; and inheritance rights of same-sex partners, inheritance rights of children, with comparison to the other common law countries (which are far more generous to children). Also included is a more logical presentation of nonprobate transfers and their role in estate planning, fully updated tax chapter with attention to new developments such as the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Notes, questions, and problems have been revised throughout where appropriate in light of the foregoing and other developments.

About the Author
Jesse Dukeminier of Los Angeles died April 20, 2003. He was professor emeritus at UCLA School of Law, where he taught property law for 40 years, and wrote "Property" and "Wills, Trusts, and Estates." He was the first UCLA Law faculty member to receive a University Distinguished Teaching Award, was twice elected professor of the year and recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Teaching. He also practiced law with a Wall Street firm, taught at the University of Chicago and was a visiting professor at HLS from 1989 to 1990. During WWII, he served in the U.S. Army.

Stanley M. Johanson, who joined the Texas faculty in 1963, was in the inaugural group of professors who were elected, in 1995, to the University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers, whose purpose is to give public recognition to outstanding classroom teachers at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Johanson teaches courses on Wills & Estates and Estate Planning. He is the co-author of Wills, Trusts and Estates (Aspen, 6th ed., 2000), which is used in over 120 American law schools, and is the author of Johanson's Texas Probate Code Annotated (West, 2003) and "Wills," in the Gilbert Law Series (Bar/Bri Group, 2003). In 1997, Professor Johanson received the Treat Award for Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the National College of Probate Judges. Professor Johanson is a member of the American Law Institute, an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trusts & Estates Council, and an Academic Fellow of the American College of Tax Council. The former editor-in-chief of the Washington Law Review and a Teaching Fellow at the Harvard Law School in 1961-63, Professor Johanson is Of Counsel to Vinson & Elkins, a Houston law firm.

New co-author James Lindgren has been a Professor of Law at Northwestern University since 1996, where he teaches Estates