wills and trusts – Overlawyered

April 25 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 10:01:50 +0000

Man evicted from lodgings abandons his ailing fish. A suitable case for criminal prosecution? [Carissa Byrne Hessick; Clint Bullock and Chelsea Donovan, WECT]
Guardianship and public administrator abuses will be one topic of elder abuse task force announced by Michigan attorney general [Beth LeBlanc, Detroit News]
“Red Flag Law is sort of like the Department of Pre-Crime from the movies” [Cato Daily Podcast with Dave Kopel and Caleb Brown on emergency gun confiscation proceedings; related, Kopel testimony via Cato, earlier]
“Man sues parents for getting rid of his vast porn collection” [Associated Press]
Three candidates vie to replace long-serving Jim Hood: “AG candidate [Mark] Baker says Mississippi should end its alliance with private lawyers” [Brian Brueggemann, Legal NewsLine]
“Is It Time to Revisit the Constitutionality of Unauthorized Practice of Law Rules?” [Michael Rosman, Federalist Society]

Tags: animals, guns, Mississippi, unauthorized practice, wills and trusts

April 25 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

January 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 10:56:45 +0000

Extended look at problems of the adult guardianship program in New York [John Leland, New York Times, earlier]
“‘Professional Speech’: a Distinction without a Difference” after the NIFLA case [Cato podcast with Caleb Brown and Robert McNamara of Institute for Justice]
New York enacts law imposing stiff new tax on opioid makers and wholesalers while forbidding them to recoup it by raising prices for buyers in other states. That won’t fly under the Dormant Commerce Clause, rules federal judge [Nate Raymond, Reuters/Insurance Journal]
Should courts uphold laws grounded in part on hostility to a religious group, though rationalized on some other basis? Both right and left have trouble staying consistent [Ilya Somin]
“Oxford University Gets Opposition To Its Attempt To Trademark ‘Oxford’ For All The Things” [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
Australian corrections officials keep bringing the wrong Peter Brown to court as murder defendant [Lowering the Bar]

Tags: Australia, New York, opioids, religious liberty, trademarks, wills and trusts

January 2 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

September 5 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 09:59:32 +0000

Event barns booming as wedding venues, but some owners of traditional banquet halls want them to be subject to heavier regulation, as by requiring use of licensed bartenders [Stephanie Morse, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
Protectionism and smuggling in ancien regime France: “Before Drug Prohibition, There Was the War on Calico” [Virginia Postrel]
Thread unpacks “Big Ag bad, family farms good” platitudes [Sarah Taber]
“An Oklahoma judge has agreed to resign after he was accused of using his contempt powers to jail people for infractions such as leaving sunflower seeds in his courtroom and talking in court” [ABA Journal]
Update: North Carolina gerrymandering plaintiffs back off, concede impracticality of using new maps in time for upcoming election [Robert Barnes, Washington Post, earlier]
“Aretha Franklin Died Without a Will, Bequeathing Estate Issues To Her Heirs” [Caron/TaxProf]

Tags: agriculture and farming, France, free trade, judges, music and musicians, Oklahoma, redistricting reform, wills and trusts

September 5 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Guardians from Hell”

Walter Olson — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 15:58:06 +0000

More, this time from Michigan, on how guardianship in the wrong hands can turn into a “completely legal, utterly grotesque system for undermining the rights of the elderly,” cutting out kids and legitimate heirs. Last fall the New Yorker ran a chilling investigative piece by Rachel Aviv exposing guardianship abuses in Nevada. [Gretchen Rachel Hammond, Tablet; coverage last October of the Rachel Aziz piece]

Tags: disabled rights, judicial system, Michigan, wills and trusts

“Guardians from Hell” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“The Dead Man Who Sued to Make Himself Alive”

Walter Olson — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 19:05:35 +0000

As of 2014, Donald E. Miller, Jr. was still alive according to the federal government, except in the state of Ohio, where he was legally dead. [Dan Lewis, Now I Know]

Tags: wills and trusts

“The Dead Man Who Sued to Make Himself Alive” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

The New Yorker on guardianship abuse

Walter Olson — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 04:05:34 +0000

“That weekend, she called her parents several times. She also called two hospitals to see if they had been in an accident. She called their landlord, too, and he agreed to visit the house. He reported that there were no signs of them. She told her husband, ‘I think someone kidnapped my parents.'”

Of all the scams and outrages in the legal system that I’ve written about, few get me as angry as does guardianship abuse. Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker report from Nevada shines a light into some dark places of elder law and of the human heart. Earlier here and here (2009 Brooklyn), here (Connecticut), here (North Carolina), here, etc. (Bronx).

Tags: disabled rights, ethics, judicial system, Nevada, psychiatry, wills and trusts

The New Yorker on guardianship abuse is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 04:05:43 +0000

“Unintended Consequences of Military Lending Act Hurt Some Families” [R.J. Lehmann]
Tenth Circuit: Fed must provide all depository institutiona access to the clearing system, whether they serve marijuana businesses or any other kind [George Selgin, Cato]
“Moneylending has been taboo for most of human history. So how did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?” [Alex Mayyasi, Aeon]
Financial regulation: too many cooks in the compliance kitchen [Cato Daily Podcast with Thaya Brook Knight and Caleb Brown] “DOL Fiduciary Rule: It’s Not Always Fun to be Right” [Knight]
“2016 was an unprecedented year in securities class actions filings.” [Baker Hostetler, JD Supra]
Trusts and the offshore wealth trade: from Edmund Burke to the Cayman Islands [Graham McAleer, Law and Liberty]

Tags: banks, debtor-creditor law, securities litigation, Wall Street, wills and trusts

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 31 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 31 May 2017 04:05:47 +0000

“Heir hunters” chase missing relatives entitled to inherit unclaimed fortunes, for a share of the recovery. Some relatives might not even be relatives [James Fanelli, New York Daily News first, second stories]
Put up a statue of Clarence Darrow for the Scopes case? OK, but then take it back down for the L.A. Times case [Mark Pulliam, Law and Liberty]
Lawyer who founded Prenda Law is disbarred [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]
“Escaping the ICWA Penalty Box: In Defense of Equal Protection for Indian Children” [Timothy Sandefur, Children’s Legal Rights Journal]
“Russian bank owners sue BuzzFeed over Trump dossier publication” [Josh Gerstein, Politico]
On OMB regulatory management, Trump administration is headed in its own new direction [Andrew Grossman]

Tags: ethics, Indian tribes, libel slander and defamation, regulation and its reform, wills and trusts

May 31 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

May 18 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 18 May 2016 04:05:40 +0000

Do behavioral economists acknowledge policymakers’ own foibles? Not often it seems [Niclas Berggren via Bryan Caplan]
China, not unlike our own attorney general-environmentalist alliance, is cracking down on the work of what it deems ideologically harmful nonprofits [ABA Journal]
Barking mad: new ABA ethics proposal would deem it professional misconduct for lawyers to discriminate on various grounds, including “socioeconomic status,” in choosing partners, employees and experts [Eugene Volokh, Sara Randazzo/WSJ Law Blog]
Virginia still has a law requiring annual safety inspection of your car, and it’s still a bad idea [Alex Tabarrok]
Court in Canadian province of New Brunswick rules against honoring will that left estate to racist group [CBC]
From the left, Paul Bland sees Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Spokeo v. Robins as a big loss for business defendants [Public Justice, earlier] Contra: Andrew Pincus, plus more from WLF.

Tags: bar associations, Canada, China, discrimination law, lawyers, Virginia, wills and trusts

May 18 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

WSJ on court-appointed guardians

Walter Olson — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 11:03:28 +0000

For many readers it will be behind a WSJ paywall, but try to catch up with the alarming account by Arian Campo-Flores and Ashby Jones of chronic problems in the system of legal guardians for adults, still “plagued by allegations of financial exploitation and abuse, despite waves of overhaul efforts. As a result, critics say, many elderly people with significant assets become ensnared in a system that seems mainly to succeed at generating billings.” One Florida woman had taken what might seem to be the appropriate precautions — assigning to one of her sons power of attorney and signing advance directives designating him as her guardian — but wound up with a court-appointed guardian anyway and before long was hundreds of thousands of dollars poorer.

Tags: wills and trusts

WSJ on court-appointed guardians is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system