The Unmerry Widow: Spousal Disinheritance and Life Insurance in North Carolina

In spite of our nation’s long-held public policy of protecting surviving spouses, some people purposely disinherit their spouses. For centuries, North Carolina more or less tolerated intentional spousal disinheritance. In 1959, in an effort to protect surviving spouses from deliberate disinheritance, North Carolina adopted a “right of dissent” statute that authorized a surviving spouse to renounce the decedent spouse’s will and receive a statutorily prescribed share (ranging from one-sixth to one-half) of the decedent spouse’s probate estate. Because the dissent statute was limited to the decedent spouse’s probate estate, it was easily circumvented through the use of non-probate transfers. In 1969, the Uniform Probate Code (“UPC”) proposed legislation designed to close the non-probate loophole by expanding the scope of the elective share to an “augmented estate” comprised of the decedent spouse’s probate estate and most non-probate transfers made by the decedent spouse during life. In 1990, the UPC added life insurance proceeds payable to persons other than the surviving spouse to the augmented estate. In 2001, the North Carolina General Assembly adopted a version of the UPC’s augmented estate. Prior to the effective date, however, the General Assembly made an ostensibly technical revision to its new elective share law. Although minor in appearance, the goal of the revision was major: the removal of life insurance proceeds payable to non-spousal beneficiaries from the scope of the elective share. The revision was likely completed due to lobbying by insurance companies, which have traditionally resisted elective share laws in other states. Despite the General Assembly’s efforts to protect insurance companies, most life insurance proceeds payable to non-spousal beneficiaries are still included in the surviving spouse’s elective share. While this inclusion promotes North Carolina’s interest in protecting surviving spouses from total disinheritance, the State does not need to choose between protecting insurance companies and protecting surviving spouses. This Article proposes legislation that would allow the State to further its policy of protecting surviving spouses while simultaneously protecting insurance companies from additional liability

A Planner\u27s Primer

Anyone undertaking an assignment to write within a few pages under this comprehensive title must limit his coverage. This general article on a subject as intangible as estate planning omits entirely or gives short treatment to many considerations which may be of great importance to the conscientious planning of relatively complicated estate situations. Emphasis will be placed on the tax aspects of estate planning, particularly federal taxes, but consideration will be given to other aspects which may be of equal or even greater importance. This deliberate emphasis is certainly not intended to add to the misleading impression, too frequently held, that the purpose of estate planning is merely to devise schemes to save taxes. It should be borne in mind that the estate being planned is the family economic fortune in its present form as well as the property which will pass at the owner\u27s death. They may be quite dissimilar. It is the living estate owner who is to be helped with his planning through action to be taken by him currently. About the only planning done after death is the upsetting of prior planning or lack of planning. The owner of an estate should not sacrifice his own security and that of his family as it is now constituted by an excessive regard for members who may survive him. He may turn out to be the one surviving them. Many plans have produced adverse consequences because death refused to follow in the planned sequence. This does not mean that estate planning should disregard all possibilities for betterment merely because the unexpected might happen. Reasonable probabilities should be acted upon, but all possible consequences must be carefully considered

Relation-changing modal operators

We study dynamic modal operators that can change the accessibility relation of a model during the evaluation of a formula. In particular, we extend the basic modal language with modalities that are able to delete, add or swap an edge between pairs of elements of the domain. We define a generic framework to characterize this kind of operations. First, we investigate relation-changing modal logics as fragments of classical logics. Then, we use the new framework to get a suitable notion of bisimulation for the logics introduced, and we investigate their expressive power. Finally, we show that the complexity of the model checking problem for the particular operators introduced is PSpace-complete, and we study two subproblems of model checking: formula complexity and program complexity.Fil: Areces, Carlos Eduardo. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Fervari, Raul Alberto. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Hoffmann, Guillaume Emmanuel. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Agents in Secrecy: The Use of Information Surrogates in Trust Administration

Trusting another to look after one\u27s best interest when money is at stake is difficult in many different situations. This is true in the area of trust administration as well. As with most areas of law and regulation, trust law addresses this concern primarily through the requirement of information disclosure. Information disclosure to trust beneficiaries has become a heated issue among trust scholars and practitioners. Interestingly, as fundamental as disclosure may be in trust administration, the duty to disclose is not precisely defined at common law and is far from uniform. This creates a profusion of problems for trustees who operate in multiple jurisdictions, or who are attempting to fulfill fiduciary or administrative duties that are not clearly defined. States recently have mentioned this desirability for clarity and uniformity when modifying their own trust laws. Additionally, litigation against trustees is on the rise. While there are many reasons for this recent uptick in litigation, the chance that a trustee will violate her obligations as a fiduciary, and therefore be subject to litigation, increases when the trustee fails to fully understand her duties. This is especially true in an area of law as complex and varied as a trustee\u27s duty to disclose trust information to its beneficiaries. Underlying the difficulties in a trustee\u27s attempt to fulfill this duty are two fundamental and seemingly opposing principles of trust law. On the one hand, trust law typically accord[s] a trust settlor nearly unfettered latitude to determine which trust terms and restrictions would benefit her chosen beneficiaries. . . . This principle advocates for a system of default rules that would allow a settlor to prohibit information disclosure and protect the trust funds against attack by immature or rival beneficiaries. On the other hand, [i]t is an accepted principle of trust law that a private trust exists to benefit the beneficiaries thereof. Once a settlor has placed assets into a trust, she has relinquished control over these assets. This principle supports mandating information disclosure to trust beneficiaries, the holders of equitable title in the trust assets. Traditionally, as a result of these two principles, settlors could construct the terms of their trusts with great discretion, but were required under common law to provide at a minimum information reasonably related to the beneficiary\u27s interest in enforcing her rights under the trust. Just how a trustee should administer a trust in which a settlor has prohibited disclosure to beneficiaries is an issue under debate, particularly after the creation of the Uniform Trust Code ( UTC or the Code ). Since 2000, when the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws ( NCCUSL ) promulgated the UTC, twenty-three jurisdictions have adopted portions of the UTC. Interestingly, no state has adopted the Code\u27s provisions on the duty to inform verbatim. Rather, the enacting states have modified those provisions in various ways, with the result that no two states\u27 provisions on the duty to inform are precisely the same. These deviations, which typically decrease the amount of mandatory information disclosure, indicate reluctance by state legislatures to completely accept the UTC\u27s guidance regarding mandatory trust information disclosure. This Note focuses on the duty to disclose as it applies to irrevocable trusts. An irrevocable trust is a trust in which the settlor has relinquished the right to terminate the trust and, therefore, has completely passed legal title on to the trustee. The UTC sections that have incited so much debate over nondisclosure only apply to irrevocable trusts. This Note does not address revocable trusts because of the nearly uncontested principle-also present in the UTC-that a trustee of a revocable trust is answerable only to the settlor and complete nondisclosure to beneficiaries is therefore permissible. Part II of this Note reviews the development of the duty to disclose, beginning with the traditional common law requirement that settlors provide at least some information to beneficiaries, then examines the approach of the UTC, and finally looks to how states have reacted to the UTC in their own enactment of a duty to inform. Part III analyzes the policy concerns behind mandating disclosure, on the one hand, and permitting nondisclosure, on the other. States have addressed these policy concerns in different ways, and the result is that there is not a uniform body of trust law on this important issue. Finally, Part IV concludes that a surrogate should be appointed to receive trust information on behalf of the beneficiaries. While the majority of relevant scholarship concludes that beneficiaries are put at too great a risk when settlors prohibit disclosure to beneficiaries, the current scholarship does not account for the trend in UTC states of allowing settlors to override mandatory disclosure. Given the great number of states that have reduced or eliminated mandatory trust information disclosure, this Note observes that advocacy of information disclosure alone has not sufficed to persuade states to adopt the UTC\u27s position. Therefore, this Note explores and advocates for a solution that would require disclosure in all irrevocable trusts, but would allow a settlor to avoid that disclosure to the beneficiaries themselves. The appointment of a surrogate to receive the information instead of the beneficiaries allows the surrogate to ensure that the interests of the beneficiaries are protected, but gives a settlor the right to prohibit the trustee from disclosing information directly to the beneficiaries, thus maintaining the settlor\u27s personal privacy as well as the confidentiality of the trust assets