Wills, Trusts, and Estates

by Jesse Dukeminier (Editor), Stanley M. Johanson, James Lindgren

This is the revised edition of a text designed for use in a course on trusts and decedents' estates and as an introduction to estate planning. The authors note that they are interested in function over form and therefore have pruned away mechanical matters, such as a step-by-step discussion of how to probate a will and settle an estate, that can be found elsewhere; they've also sought out the historical roots of modern law to illuminate its continuing growth. They declare the text's "In a changing reality the human drama abides. Trusts and estates is a field concerned fundamentally with people." Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: Law, Legal, Nonfiction

958 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[Madeline]

This book is so musty dusty and crusty

[Zoe]

Light spring read ☺️

[Chandler Brooke]

Loved the stuff about trusts for pets, and the juicy stories of affairs. Did not enjoy figuring out how to pronounce cy pres.

[Maggie DeCeuninck]

no need for the case excerpts to be as long as they were

[Indira Wolf]

a school textbook, ill give you aguess

[Izzy]

TRUST I’m done with Trust and Estates! Excuse me while I make a statutory trust for all my friend’s pets. One more exam!

[Suzanne Lang]

Best law school textbook so far. Tons of unnecessary gossipy footnotes, which I loved. Ex. "this guy's nephew professionally de-snaked dogs." "this lady was married 4 times to 4 crazy men and blew all her money on seances." Obviously paraphrased but you get the picture. Definitely don't skip the footnotes if you have to read this book for class.

[Sarah]

Pretty fun, actually. The chapters on powers of appointment and wealth transfer taxation made me want to fling myself off a cliff but the other chapters were fairly readable and the little inserts with details about the backgrounds of the parties and judges and cases were a lot of fun.

[Megan Nicholson]

This one at least had pictures

[Allison]

liked the fun blurbs that told me what happened to the parties after the case ended

[Everett Kirkman]

I had a lot of fun with this one. It was like reading gossip report everyday

[Christina]

Desperately needs an editor
SO MANY typos.

[Kristin Waski]

Kinda a depressing read, everyone dies

[Scott]

It is a great book. In preparation of your estate documents, it is vital that you have an understanding of what you want and how you can get it.

Don't do it yourself. Paying an attorney to write the documents will cost you hundreds, maybe thousands - but you know what the cost is right now. So it is a fixed and controllable expenditure. Shop around. find an attorney who can do what you want at a fair price.

If you do it yourself, no one will find your mistakes until you are dead. Fixing the mistakes you made may cost your heirs $1,000s, TENS of thousands, maybe HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars. Fixing the mistakes will come at an incredible cost in time, money and frustration for your heirs. It will involve the courts and dealing with the IRS! The old saying: "The attorney who represents himself has a fool for a client."

[Courtney]

This was surprisingly enjoyable, as far as case books go! Each chapter was filled with small narrative style portions to make it as readable as possible. The cases were interesting and illustrated the points well.

I think that the content was pretty light though, obviously geared toward beginners and students.

I looked forward to the footnotes in each chapter!

[Steven]

Textbook as part of my Wills, Trusts, and Estates class in Escuela de Law.

[Lauren]

more humor than one would expect to find in a casebook - the editors do a good job to lighten this up...

[Valerie Sherman]

I'm with Meg on this one, this was pretty good as casebooks go. I almost fell out of my chair when I saw that it had pictures - even a full color plate of a Mark Rothko painting!

[Meg Murphy]

this is actually pretty good for a textbook. i enjoy the pictures and editor's footnotes about the background of the crazy people involved in the cases. it makes the cases more interesting.

[Robin]

I like the organization and format of this casebook.

[Tim W]

Apparently the Bolsheviks got rid of inheritance altogether in 1918 but had to bring it back four years later because the abolition caused too much political unrest.

[Purple Wimple]

Casebook for wills, trusts, and estates. Dukeminier picks interesting ones, and the topic is a necessary for every adult, eventually!

This is better read for credit.

[Jeff]

Lucid and entertaining.

[Kara]

Hate the subject matter, but am forced to admit that this is a good text for a clear and concise summation of trust and estate law.

[Sarah]

Kill me.

[Kristin]

lolol

[David]

Not bad for required law reading! The authors try to inject some humor and interesting notes after cases.

[Beth]

this is how much my life sucks...this is actually my most exciting reading for the semester.

[Ellen Drews]

Unfortunately...this is more accurate of what I am spending my time reading these days.