Self-Settled Spendthrift Trusts: Should a Few Bad Apples Spoil the Bunch?

It is unfortunate, but perhaps not terribly surprising, that the first two reported cases to consider the application of conflict of laws principles to self-settled spendthrift trusts both involved bad facts from an asset protection planning standpoint. In this regard, the adage bad facts produce bad law is not a slight on the courts, but rather an acknowledgment of a court\u27s primary duty to do substantial justice to the parties immediately before it. However, in an effort to do substantial justice to the parties immediately before them, the Portnoy and Brooks courts have forged what may well become the first two links in an overly stiff and unyielding chain of precedent upon which future courts will rely without due analysis of the conflict of laws issue. We do not suggest that debtors are bereft of any moral obligation to creditors, nor that the courts should countenance fraudulent conveyances simply because they may be valid under the law of another jurisdiction. We suggest instead that there must be a balancing of interests recognizing that our society continues to evolve, and that our common law must do so as well. In summary, a self-settled spendthrift trust, if valid under the law of a sister state, or even the law of a foreign state, should be respected if created for legitimate estate or asset protection planning purposes but should provide no spendthrift protection if not

Roundtable Discussion

Welcome to the Roundtable panel discussion. Each of the speakers is going to open with a few minutes statement. And then we\u27re going to pose some questions to open discussion, so it will take people through the whole asset protection route from beginning to end, hopefully. And then, any questions you may have we believe we\u27ll have sufficient time to ask those questions and have them answered. You may get very different views. And then we\u27ve just decided that the jury will decide whether asset protection trusts are a good thing or a bad thing. Okay. So pay attention

Arousal State-Dependent Alterations in VTA-GABAergic Neuronal Activity.

Decades of research have implicated the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in motivation, learning and reward processing. We and others recently demonstrated that it also serves as an important node in sleep/wake regulation. Specifically, VTA-dopaminergic neuron activation is sufficient to drive wakefulness and necessary for the maintenance of wakefulness. However, the role of VTA-GABAergic neurons in arousal regulation is not fully understood. It is still unclear whether VTA-GABAergic neurons predictably alter their activity across arousal states, what is the nature of interactions between VTA-GABAergic activity and cortical oscillations, and how activity in VTA-GABAergic neurons relates to VTA-dopaminergic neurons in the context of sleep/wake regulation. To address these, we simultaneously recorded population activity from VTA subpopulations and electroencephalography/electromyography (EEG/EMG) signals during spontaneous sleep/wake states and in the presence of salient stimuli in freely-behaving mice. We found that VTA-GABAergic neurons exhibit robust arousal-state-dependent alterations in population activity, with high activity and transients during wakefulness and REM sleep. During wakefulness, population activity of VTA-GABAergic neurons, but not VTA-dopaminergic neurons, was positively correlated with EEG γ power and negatively correlated with θ power. During NREM sleep, population activity in both VTA-GABAergic and VTA-dopaminergic neurons negatively correlated with δ, θ, and σ power bands. Salient stimuli, with both positive and negative valence, activated VTA-GABAergic neurons. Together, our data indicate that VTA-GABAergic neurons, like their dopaminergic counterparts, drastically alter their activity across sleep-wake states. Changes in their activity predicts cortical oscillatory patterns reflected in the EEG, which are distinct from EEG spectra associated with dopaminergic neural activity

“At ‘Amen Meals’ It’s Me and God” Religion and Gender: A New Jewish Women’s Ritual

New ritual practices performed by Jewish women can serve as test cases for an examination of the phenomenon of the creation of religious rituals by women. These food-related rituals, which have been termed ‘‘amen meals’’ were developed in Israel beginning in the year 2000 and subsequently spread to Jewish women in Europe and the United States. This study employs a qualitative-ethnographic methodology grounded in participant-observation and in-depth interviews to describe these nonobligatory, extra-halakhic rituals. What makes these rituals stand out is the women’s sense that through these rituals they experience a direct con- nection to God and, thus, can change reality, i.e., bring about jobs, marriages, children, health, and salvation for friends and loved ones. The ‘‘amen’’ rituals also create an open, inclusive woman’s space imbued with strong spiritual–emotional energies that counter the women’s religious marginality. Finally, the purposes and functions of these rituals, including identity building and displays of cultural capital, are considered within a theoretical framework that views ‘‘doing gender’’ and ‘‘doing religion’’ as an integrated experience