A will or testament is a legal document by which a person, the testator, expresses their wishes as to how their property is to be distributed at death, and names one or more persons, the executor, to manage the estate until its final distribution. For the devolution of property not disposed of by will, see inheritance and intestacy.
In common law and statutory law, a life estate is the ownership of land for the duration of a person's life. In legal terms, it is an estate in real property that ends at death when ownership of the property may revert to the original owner, or it may pass to another person. The owner of a life estate is called a "life tenant".
In Civil law and Roman law, the legitime, also known as a forced share or legal right share, of a decedent's estate is that portion of the estate from which he cannot disinherit his children, or his parents, without sufficient legal cause. The word comes from French héritier légitime, meaning "rightful heir."
The Statute of Frauds (1677) is an Act of the Parliament of England. It required that certain types of contracts, wills, and grants, and assignment or surrender of leases or interest in real property must be in writing and signed to avoid fraud on the court by perjury and subornation of perjury. It also required that documents of the courts be signed and dated.
Wills have a lengthy history.
Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law and accepted as a valid public document that is the true last testament of the deceased, or whereby the estate is settled according to the laws of intestacy in the state of residence [or real property] of the deceased at time of death in the absence of a legal will.
A concurrent estate or co-tenancy is a concept in property law which describes the various ways in which property is owned by more than one person at a time. If more than one person owns the same property, they are commonly referred to as co-owners. Legal terminology for co-owners of real estate is either co-tenants or joint tenants, with the latter phrase signifying a right of survivorship. Most common law jurisdictions recognize tenancies in common and joint tenancies, and some also recognize tenancies by the entirety, which is a joint tenancy between married persons. Many jurisdictions refer to a joint tenancy as a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, but they are the same, as every joint tenancy includes a right of survivorship. In contrast, a tenancy in common does not include a right of survivorship.
A will contest, in the law of property, is a formal objection raised against the validity of a will, based on the contention that the will does not reflect the actual intent of the testator or that the will is otherwise invalid. Will contests generally focus on the assertion that the testator lacked testamentary capacity, was operating under an insane delusion, or was subject to undue influence or fraud. A will may be challenged in its entirety or in part.
A pretermitted heir is a term used in the law of property to describe a person who would likely stand to inherit under a will, except that the testator did not include the person in the testator's will. Omission may occur because the testator did not know of the omitted person at the time the will was written.
Lapse and anti-lapse are complementary concepts under the US law of wills, which address the disposition of property that is willed to someone who dies before the testator.
Ademption, or ademption by extinction, is a common law doctrine used in the law of wills to determine what happens when property bequeathed under a will is no longer in the testator's estate at the time of the testator's death. For a devise (bequest) of a specific item of property, such property is considered adeemed, and the gift fails. For example, if a will bequeathed the testator's car to a specific beneficiary, but the testator owned no car at the time of his or her death, the gift would be adeemed and the aforementioned beneficiary would receive no gift at all.
In the common law of England, the doctrine of worthier title was a legal doctrine that preferred taking title to real estate by descent over taking title by devise or by purchase. It essentially provides that a remainder cannot be created in the grantor's heirs, at least not by those words.
Simultaneous death is a problem of inheritance which occurs when two people die at, or very near, the same time, and at least one of them is entitled to part or all of the other's estate on their death. This is usually the result of an un-natural death occurring from events such as an accident, a homicide, or a murder-suicide.
The slayer rule, in the common law of inheritance, is a doctrine that prohibits inheritance by a person who murders someone from whom he or she stands to inherit. In calculating inheritance of the decedent's estate, the effect of the slayer rule was that the slayer would be treated as though he or she had predeceased the person who had been murdered, therefore his or her share of the estate would pass to his or her issue.
A codicil is a testamentary document similar but not necessarily identical to a will. In some jurisdictions, it may serve to amend, rather than replace, a previously executed will. In others, it may serve as an alternative to a will. In still others, there is no recognized distinction between a codicil and a will.
Forced heirship is a form of testate partible inheritance whereby the estate of a deceased is separated into (1) an indefeasible portion, the forced estate, passing to the deceased's next-of-kin (conjunctissimi), and (2) a discretionary portion, or free estate, to be freely disposed of by will. Forced heirship is generally a feature of civil-law legal systems which do not recognize total freedom of testation. Normally, the deceased's estate is in-gathered and wound up without discharging liabilities, which means accepting inheritance includes accepting the liabilities attached to inherited property. The forced estate is divided into shares which include the share of issue and the spousal share. This provides a minimum protection that cannot be defeated by will. The free estate, on the other hand, is at the discretion of a testator to be distributed by will on death to whomever he or she chooses. Takers in the forced estate are known as forced heirs.
Islamic Inheritance jurisprudence is a field of Islamic jurisprudence that deals with inheritance, a topic that is prominently dealt with in the Qur'an. It is often called Mīrāth, and its branch of Islamic law is technically known as ʿilm al-farāʾiḍ.
McArthur v. Scott, 113 U.S. 340 (1885), regarded a suit brought to contest a will which directed land to be conveyed to or divided among remaindermen at the expiration of a particular estate, are to be presumed, unless clearly controlled by other provisions, to relate to the beginning of enjoyment by remaindermen, and not to the vesting of the title in them.
The South African law of succession prescribes the rules which determine the devolution of a person's estate after his death, and all matters incidental thereto. It identifies the beneficiaries who are entitled to succeed to the deceased's estate, and the extent of the benefits they are to receive, and determines the different rights and duties that persons may have in a deceased's estate. It forms part of private law.
Does this apply to the UK? Need to cite source.
