The United States Supreme Court’s expansion of the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”) has made arbitration clauses ubiquitous in consumer and employment contracts and provoked heated debate. Recently, though, arbitration clauses have become common in a different context: wills and trusts....

For decades, courts and commentators have debated the normative implications of contract procedure. Conservatives argue that mandatory arbitration clauses reduce the burden on the judicial system and that class arbitration waivers, choice-of-law clauses, and jury trial waivers allow businesses...

This Article claims that trust law should recognize the unconscionability defense. It begins by noting the symmetry between trust and contract defenses and the broad consensus among courts and scholars that trusts are contracts. It sketches the leading rationales for why courts enforce promises...

Virtually all modern contracts are standard forms. Although courts have long interpreted ambiguities in such agreements strictly against the drafter, they have struggled to explain why they do so. Under sustained academic fire, states are beginning to abandon the strict against-the-drafter...

Supposedly, one of the most important sticks in the bundle of property rights is the power to transfer an asset after death. This Article explores objects and entitlements that defy this norm. Indescendibility — the inability to pass property by will, trust, or intestacy — lurks throughout...

In many legal systems, the Wills Act requires testators to memorialize their wishes in a signed and witnessed writing. For centuries, courts insisted on strict compliance with these fussy statutory requirements. But in 1975, South Australia adopted the harmless error rule, which permits judges...

The prime directive of wills law is to honor a testator’s intent. As a result, lawmakers take pains to populate the field with majoritarian default rules: those that fill gaps in an estate plan with principles that reflect the wishes of most property owners. However, this Article exposes a...

This is an invited reply to Professor E. Gary Spitko's provocative and creative article, The Will as an Implied Unilateral Arbitration Contract. Professor Spitko argues that arbitration clauses in wills are enforceable because there is a "donative freedom contract" between the state and property...

Testators sometimes use "no contest clauses": terms that disinherit anyone who files litigation against the estate. This invited contribution to Law and Contemporary Problems' special issue on The Butterfly Effect in Boilerplate Contract Interpretation examines whether no contest clauses are a...

Many venerable norms in inheritance law were designed to prevent forgery. Most prominently, since 1837, the Wills Act has required testators to express their last wishes in a signed and witnessed writing. Likewise, the court-supervised probate process helped ensure that a donative instrument was...