Webinar on Children Omitted from Wills

The American Bar Association is holding a webinar entitled, Airbrushed Heirs: The Problem of Children Omitted from Wills, which will take place May 16, 2017 at 12:30 PM ET. Provided below is a description of the webinar:

While most countries offer children a mandatory share of their parents’ estates, U.S. law does not.  American parents have free rein to disinherit any or all of their children.  U.S. law is more protective, however, of children when circumstances indicate that a parent failed to include them in a will inadvertently. Throughout U.S. law, children enjoy some sort of legal safeguard against an estate plan that omits them contrary to the inferred wishes of a parent, though the form of this safeguard varies from state to state.

Our panel will address this problem, highlighted in Professor Hirsch’s article “Airbrushed Heirs:  The Problem of Children Omitted from Wills,” which featured in Volume 50 of the Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal (2015).  Professor Hirsch will describe the different forms of American statutes protecting children of a testator who fails to provide for them in his or her will, as well as some of the shortcomings of these statutes.  Professor Scalise, a member of the Louisiana Law Institute who has written extensively on inheritance issues, will discuss these issues from a civil law perspective.  Professor Taite will discuss her recent work in which she has argued that the best interest of the child is better served by the statutory forced share of the parent’s estate over the parent’s testamentary freedom.