Title: Wills for Everyone: Helping Individuals Opt Out of Intestacy
Abstract: Most Americans die without executing a will, thereby allowing testamentary freedom to lapse and property owned at death to pass by default rules of intestacy rather than the decedent’s expressed intent. This is problematic because most individuals without a will neither intend to die intestate and nor understand the significant undesirable consequences of intestacy. Prior intestacy scholarship evaluated the fairness, efficiency and social consequences of the current rules of heirship, but implicitly accepted the high rate of intestacy as a fait accompli. This Article rejects the assumption that the high rate of intestacy is insusceptible to legal reform.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 8
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