For the 99.5%.
A funny thing happened on the way to President Biden’s inauguration. What had been a trickle in the few years before the election became a flood after November 2020.[1] Famous artists started selling their song catalogs. Bob Dylan sold his songs for a reported $300,000,000. He was not the first to do so. Paul Simon, Blondie, Shakira, Barry Manilow, Neil Young, Chrissie Hynde, and many other notables of the music…
Tom’s father recently passed away. We have been friends for many years and share a love for movies and plays. Tom is a film and theatre historian and writer of some note. Needless to say, I am neither (hence, “movies and plays”). Tom, even with his vast erudition, is gifted with a profound lack of pretension and a genuine interest in the next person’s opinion. We are both great fans of the movies of Stanley…
I have been practicing in the area of trusts and estates litigation for so long that it is rare that I even raise an eyebrow at what people will do and say about their families in order to gain an advantage in a probate contest or other estate proceeding. I also have developed a varied practice in guardianships, having represented petitioners and alleged incapacitated persons, and having been appointed many times as a court evaluator. …
Promises, Promises was, of course, a classic Broadway musical with music by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, and book by Neil Simon. For baseball fans this group represents, like the 1927 Yankees, a veritable “murderers’ row” of genius. It introduced classic songs like “I Say a Little Prayer,” “A House Is Not a Home,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and “Promises, Promises,” all immortalized by the great Dionne Warrick.
So what does this…
This entry is occasioned by a recent article from Prof. Gerry W. Breyer, a very prominent scholar in the field of trusts and estates. A Grave Error: A Man Attempting to Fake His Own Death Was Caught Because of a Typo, by Gerry W. Beyer (the Governor Preston E. Smith Regents Professor of Law, Texas Tech Univ. School of Law).
A Long Island man was scheduled to be sentenced for a crime. On the date of…
In New York, is there a legal remedy for “wrongful life” when a hospital or a doctor refuses to follow the terms of a patient’s living will and his or her health care proxy’s instructions resulting in pain and suffering by the patient?
Most people have heard of legal actions for pain and suffering and wrongful death. The former requires that the individual was aware of his or her pain (see, e.g., McDougald v Garber,…
The governing principle of this blog is to be useful to the general public. One way to accomplish this goal is to avoid the use of jargon; another way is to avoid reporting on the minutiae of the practice by rehashing the recent decisions from the courts. (Attorneys have many outlets for such shoptalk.)
In this entry, we offer a modest proposal or two on ways of making estate planning and practice easier and less…
In these troubled times, we at Jaspan Schlesinger LLP extend our best wishes for the coming year to all.
Before my colleague Sally Donahue continues her series on guardianship matters next week, I thought I would fill in the gap and digress from the world of Trusts and Estates with some thoughts on the role that live music and theatre plays in making New York the world capital of the performing arts. I hope COVID-19…
Mom needs help with her finances and daily life. She is no longer capable of paying her bills, doing her banking, managing her medications, and is generally failing mentally. As a doting child, you want to help her, but how? Well, you certainly can take her to the doctor, manage her healthcare, bring her groceries, or even have her move into your home. After all, who would not help Mom in her time of need? …
Continuing our theme of odd bequests (last time the blog considered the adventures of Trouble, Leona Helmsley’s millionaire Maltese), let’s consider some other weird or questionable estate plans if only as a warning to the reader.
“Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.” Thus did William Shakespeare make the sole provision for his wife in his will. While this has puzzled scholars for centuries, the current opinion seems to…