Product Detail

Contemporary Approaches to Trusts and Estates uses cases and statutory materials along with exercises and problems to integrate legal analysis and practice skills. The book can be used in a three- or four-credit course with or without the exercises, and sample syllabi are included in the Teacher’s Manual.

This innovative casebook:

• Proceeds chronologically, covering lifetime planning issues before wills.
• Uses extensive textual explanations to present the law and its many nuances.
• Consistent with the call in the Carnegie Report for schools to add more practice skills to the curriculum, includes exercises in document drafting, role-playing, and letter writing to clients.
• Reproduces statutory materials and the Restatement, so that no separate supplement is required.
• Explores the ethical obligations of estate planning lawyers using the MRPC and the ACTEC Commentaries.
• Presents contemporary cases, such as Feinberg, Kuralt, and Schiavo, which reflect the development of the law into the 21st century.
• Includes fact-based problems, requiring students to explore cases, the UPC, the UTC, and other statutes, as well as the MRPC, in depth.
• Is accompanied by a Teacher’s Manual that offers suggestions on:
  • Teaching the cases and statutory materials and expanding the discussion beyond what is included in the casebook
  • Appropriate responses for the questions and problems
  • How to evaluate each exercise
  • Ways to vary each assignment from year to year

*A Teacher's Manual may be available for this book. Teacher's Manuals are a professional courtesy offered to professors only. For more information or to request a copy, please contact Wolters Kluwer Law and Business at 800-950-5259 or legaledu@wolterskluwer.com.

Ch. 1. Introduction to Estate Planning and the Lawyer’s Roles

Ch. 2. Inheritance and Relationship

Ch. 3. Intestacy: What Happens to a Descendent’s Property if There Is No Will?

Ch. 4. Nonprobate Transfers: Passing Property by Will Substitutes and Gifts

Ch. 5. Lifetime Transfers: Creation of Trusts

Ch. 6. Fiduciary Duties

Ch. 7. Rights of Beneficiaries and Creditors in Trust Property, Modification, and Termination of Trusts

Ch. 8. Powers of Appointment

Ch. 9. Will Validity

Ch. 10. Interpreting the Will

Ch. 11. Revoking the Will and Will Contests

Ch. 12. Protecting the Family

Ch. 13. Planning for Incapacity

Ch. 14. Estate and Gift Tax Planning

Ch. 15. Administration of the Probate Estate

Ch. 16. Charitable Trusts