Article on What to Do With What’s Left Behind

John V. Orth (North Carolina), recently published an article entitled, What to Do With What’s Left Behind, 58 St. Louis U. L.J. 707 (2014). Provided below is an excerpt from the article:

The need for a course in trusts and estates is succinctly explained in the great sources of Western civilization—Shakespeare and the Bible. Everyone will die, and dead people cannot take anything with them.3 Just about every element of the course begins with these inescapable facts—which is why I was amused to see a student’s comment on a recent course evaluation: “I wish he wouldn’t talk so much about death.”4

Perhaps the student had been misled by the title of the course, which like the caption on a modern life insurance policy skillfully elides the fact that it is all about death. Calling the course Trusts and Estates presents another truth-in-labeling problem because it gives pride of place to the trust, which is not considered in depth until halfway through the semester. In fact, the logical progression of the subject tracks the history of the law of succession: intestacy, wills, only then trusts—and many other legal arrangements besides.5