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Widely hailed as one of the best casebooks in legal education, this comprehensive text combines interesting cases, thoughtful analysis, notes, images, and a clear organization for an excellent teaching tool. Cartoons, illustrations, case documents, and photographs provide useful visual commentary. Sidebars on relevant persons, places, and things provide interesting and sometimes humorous context. A comprehensive Teacher’s Manual provides a complete teaching summary of all materials in the book, and comprehensive PowerPoint slides provide helpful structure for classroom organization. 

New to the Twelfth Edition: 

• Updated treatment of electronic or digital wills, with:
  • a completely revised section on video wills to reflect new case law developments, and
  • attention to law reform to facilitate electronic versions of other estate planning documents
• Updated and extensively revised coverage of revocable trusts, with attention to new case law developments, especially in the revocation of such a trust
• Updated and extensively revised treatment of lapse and conditions of survivorship to reflect new case law developments
• Updated and extensively revised coverage of the principal and income problem, in particular concerning new case law on the power to adjust
• Attention across topics to ongoing law reform efforts on conflicts of laws in trusts and estates

• Updated coverage of wealth and income inequality and continuing proposals for a wealth tax

Professors and students will benefit from: 

• Unique blend of wit, erudition, insight, and playfulness retained from the late Jesse Dukeminier
• Organization that covers all the key topics in a logical, clear format, including a completely revised section on video wills and attention to reform to facilitate electronic versions of estate planning
• A visually arresting two-color design
• Interesting cases that are not only fun to read, but fun to teach
• Cases enhanced and connected to broader legal principles by well-written notes, questions, problems, and sidebars
• Cartoons, illustrations, wills and other case documents, and photographs that provide visual commentary and teaching aids