Spendthrift Trusts and Public Policy: Economic and Cognitive Perspectives

In Part I, I shall explore restraints against voluntary alienation: that is, restrictions on a beneficiary\u27s right to terminate the arrangement-to take the money and run. In Part II, I shall proceed to restraints against involuntary alienation: that is, restrictions on creditors\u27 rights to reach the trust corpus in order to satisfy their claims. Finally, in Part III, I take up the refinement of spendthrift trust doctrine: assuming the expediency of a general warrant to create spendthrift trusts, should lawmakers nonetheless carve out exceptions to their effectiveness

Formalizing Gratuitous And Contractual Transfers: A Situational Theory

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 under which a gift, will, or contract occurs. Those background conditions, rather than the category into which the transfer falls, dictate the optimal formalizing rule for a transfer. In light of this observation, this Article proposes an integrated approach to formalizing rules that varies the required formalities for a transfer on the basis of situational criteria rather than the prevailing categorical ones

Testation and the Mind

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 economize on decision costs. The Article looks at state-of-mind rules through this prism and also analyzes the public policy of these rules from the perspective of modern research into psychology. Finally, the Article examines state-of-mind rules comparatively, identifying inconsistencies between them that require justification. The Article closes by observing potential expansions of the model and applications in other areas of law