Critical Trusts and Estates Conference

The below posting is as a courtesy to Prof. Carla Spivack.

This is a reminder to submit paper, panel and works in progress proposals for the Sixth Biennial Critical Trusts and Estates Conference to be held at Richmond Law School on October 9-10.

Founded in 2012 at Oklahoma City University School of Law, this conference gathers scholars and practitioners from around the world to explore the myriad ways succession law not only distributes wealth, but also constitutes social relations, identities, and hierarchies across generations. We construe “succession law” broadly to include related issues in property law, family law, and other related fields.

We welcome papers that interrogate the role of property transmission, inheritance law, and trusts and estates in shaping and sustaining structures of power, including but not limited to those organized around race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, immigration, and nation. We are particularly interested in work that explores how wealth transmission both reflects and produces economic and power relations and that draws on a range of critical traditions such as feminist legal theory, critical race theory, LatCrit, queer theory, disability studies, postcolonial theory, and related approaches.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to): the racialized and gendered dimensions of inheritance and family formation; the relationship between succession law and colonialism or global inequality; the role of trusts and estates in climate governance and intergenerational justice; and the ways private wealth structures interact with public law and democratic institutions. We also welcome papers addressing today’s trusts and estates “hot topics,” like the reformation of revocable trusts, the policy/history of testamentary freedom, and trust privacy/secrecy.

We welcome proposals from senior and junior faculty, practitioners, previous participants and new voices (including colleagues participating in the earlier August ACTEC workshop at George Mason Law School). Please indicate whether your proposal is intended for a panel or for the Works In Progress Session. The Works in Progress Session will pair senior commentators with junior scholars to discuss the projects they are developing.

Please submit proposals to atait@richmond.edu and cspiv@albanylaw.edu.