Clause in will invalidating later wills I was reading an article about Hetty Green and it mentions her challenging a will on the basis that there was an earlier will with a clause invalidating any later wills. Is such a clause enforceable, say in USA jurisdiction? Of course, glad to have comments from other nations as well. Will be interesting to compare.
In Robinson v. Mandell, the authenticity of a mutual will was in question. Hetty Green (Robinson) claimed that her aunt (Howland) intended to disinherit the father of Robinson and requested that they were both to make a will, so that in case Howland predeceased Robinson but Robinson predeceased her father, the latter would not obtain anything derived from Howland's estate via Robinson. At the centre of the case is the allegation that it was at the same time mutually agreed between the parties that the respective wills, so to be made, were to be exchanged, and that each was to have possession of the will of the other, and that neither was to make any other will without notifying the other, and returning the other's will so to be held in exchange. This is essentially a contract between (at the time) two living persons, and at least at the time, generally enforceable unless there exist motives to nullify the contract. Of course, the parties can also revoke the contracts according to the rules in the contract or provided by statutes. The court made the following observation (among others): Where two persons agree each with the other to make mutual wills, and both execute the agreement, it is held that neither can properly revoke his will without giving notice to the other of such revocation. The death of one of the parties in such a case carries his part of the contract into execution, and the better opinion perhaps is, that the other party, after that event, if the agreement was definite and satisfactory, cannot rescind the contract. The particular contract here would be irrevocably executed by one party due to her death and the contract is definitive and cannot be changed. However, in this case, it was decided against Robinson because the existence of the mutual will was not proved. By contrast, a traditional will is a unilateral declaration made by the testator, who in general cannot bind their future self from making another legally valid decision overriding the previous will, unless another party's interests are adversely impacted under certain conditions (e.g. under proprietary estoppel) or the law provides otherwise in that jurisdiction. Nowadays in Massachusetts, the statutes provide for methods to revoke a will as well as contracts regarding the making or non-making of a will that could make certain wills irrevocable. Section 2–507. [Revocation by Writing or by Act.] (a) A will or any part thereof is revoked: (1) by executing a subsequent will that revokes the previous will or part expressly or by inconsistency; or (2) by performing a revocatory act on the will, if the testator performed the act with the intent and for the purpose of revoking the will or part or if another individual performed the act in the testator's conscious presence and by the testator's direction. For purposes of this paragraph, ''revocatory act on the will'' includes burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating, or destroying the will or any part of it. (b) If a subsequent will does not expressly revoke a previous will, the execution of the subsequent will wholly revokes the previous will by inconsistency if the testator intended the subsequent will to replace rather than supplement the previous will. (c) The testator is presumed to have intended a subsequent will to replace rather than supplement a previous will if the subsequent will makes a complete disposition of the testator's estate. If this presumption arises and is not rebutted, the previous will is revoked; only the subsequent will is operative on the testator's death. (d) The testator is presumed to have intended a subsequent will to supplement rather than replace a previous will if the subsequent will does not make a complete disposition of the testator's estate. If this presumption arises and is not rebutted, the subsequent will revokes the previous will only to the extent the subsequent will is inconsistent with the previous will; each will is fully operative on the testator's death to the extent they are not inconsistent. Section 2–514. [Contracts Concerning Succession.] A contract to make or not to make a will or devise, or to revoke or not to revoke a will or devise, or to die intestate, if executed after the effective date of this article, may be established only by (i) provisions of a will stating material provisions of the contract, (ii) an express reference in a will to a contract and extrinsic evidence proving the terms of the contract, or (iii) a writing signed by the decedent evidencing the contract. The execution of a joint will or mutual wills shall not create a presumption of a contract not to revoke the will or wills.
If you say something twice, eventually they’ll be in conflict Law codes are vast. They deal with many things and sometimes, as here, they deal with the same thing twice. If they duplicated themselves, rather than cross-referencing, every time the law was changed, every single instance would have to be tracked down and changed. Admittedly, that is not as big a problem with digital codes (but still not infallible and definitely time-consuming) but when these would have to be found by hand, it was damn near impossible. Written this way, change it once and it’s changed everywhere. My first boss taught me that. The fired was engineering rather than law but the principle is the same.
It has to be 'liquidated damages', since a penalty clause is unenforceable. It has to have a reasonable relation to the party's legitimate interest. The point is that it has to represent a good faith estimate of the actual damage.
No All parties must agree to change a contract. On the face of it, the New Tenant has to be “acceptable to both the Landlord and the remaining individual or individuals comprising the Tenant (the Remaining Tenant)”. It goes on to describe what the landlord may consider in making this assessment; there is no such imposition on the Remaining Tenant. However, there is implicit in a contract a requirement that the parties must act reasonably when using discretion. If Remaining Tenant repeatedly rejects every proposed New Tenant then this raises the question of if they are acting reasonably. Have you clearly articulated why the proposed replacements are unacceptable and are those reasonable reasons?
Non-residential tenancies are subject to Fla. Stat Ch. 83 Part I. This is statutorily a tenancy at-will unless a contrary agreement is in writing signed by the lessor: the duration of the lease is yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly as determined by the periodicity of rent payments. There are various legal conditions related to rent default and causes for removing tenants, also conditions about premises that are wholly untenantable. Unlike residential leases, there are not any special statutory conditions surrounding the landlords presentation of leases. Florida law contemplates and allows the possibility that there are no written documents, and for non-residential tenancies has very little to say about it (only pertaining to the distinction between at-will vs not at-will leases). Therefore, the matter follows the general rules for contractual disputes: whoever makes the best case for their claims wins. If Bob has a scanned copy, that is excellent proof. If Alice alleges and proves that the scanned copy was modified, that disposes of Bob's evidence. If Alice presents a copy of the contract that says otherwise (I do mean copy), then this anomaly has to be explained. Bob can claim that they tore up Alice's original and renegotiated the deal, but he needs to prove that claim. If Alice presents the original contract, Bob's story becomes much less plausible. There are millions of variants of what might happen: the point is, there is no requirement to present the original signed document to support a claim in a contractual dispute.
As of present moment, under no circumstances. That said, the law may and probably will change around that. But the time has not come just yet. Trying to predict what the law will be is out of scope of this site.
Conditions in a will are.. complicated. As a rule of thumb you can impose conditions but that doesn't mean they are always going to be upheld. Some will be ruled void where they are considered &quot;against public policy&quot; - where it's against the public interest to consider the condition valid. e.g: encouraging someone to commit a crime; inducing the future separation of a married couple; unreasonable restrictions on marriage; depriving a parent of control over their children; requiring a child to change their religion. That sort of thing. Another way is if the condition is &quot;impossible&quot; (or so improbable/impractical as would make no real difference) e.g. you can't say &quot;they have to leap the grand canyon on a skateboard&quot; or &quot;must visit mars and bring back ice cream first&quot; that sort of thing. Alternatively if the condition is too vague or uncertain e.g. &quot;the beneficiary will inherit when they are ‘suitably’ married&quot; or impractical to enforce e.g. &quot;no one with the surname Booth may enter the property on a Wednesday&quot;. I'm not sure those are going to apply here - the condition sounds specific and not particularly difficult to achieve or to measure compliance. That doesn't mean it's going to stick though - you can challenge the condition in court and they might chose to void the condition. Since the condition sounds like what's called a &quot;condition subsequent&quot; (i.e. it comes into effect after receiving the &quot;gift&quot;) the court can use discretion to have the gift still take place if the condition is voided. How about if they were not allowed to sell it for 20 years, or 100? The 100 years variant could fail under &quot;impossible&quot; - since it would take the time period the beneficiary was required to comply with the condition past the point they could reasonably be expected to comply with it (since people typically live that long), similarly with the 20 years (or even the 10) if it was going past the remaining expected lifespan of the recipient. Basically it boils down to &quot;challenge it in court and see what they say&quot; - but as ever consult an experienced solicitor before doing anything along those lines. Having a condition declared void doesn't always translate as &quot;you get it free and clear&quot; - in some circumstances it means the gift becomes part of the Residuary Estate instead.
So my understanding is that the phrase "common law" can refer to either the concept of laws established by court precedent or it can refer to a specific body of laws that have been established that way. Yes. Should I just be inferring that from context? Yes. Is there a single body of "common law"? No. Are there distinct bodies of "U.K. common law" and "U.S. common law" for example? Yes, furthermore there is different common law in England/Wales, Northern Ireland &amp; Scotland and each state of the US. Further, Scotland and Louisiana are not straightforward common law jurisdictions but rather a blend of common and civil law. If so, how are they related? They are related in that they all: have a common source, middle English common law evolve in the same way - judges interpreting the current common law and the statutes of the legislature follow an appeals system through higher levels of courts. They do not all go in the same direction though. Do judges in common law countries cite court decisions in other common law countries? Sometimes; it depends on the "distance" of the other jurisdiction. A judge in New South Wales is quite likely to consider how judges in Queensland and Victoria have considered similar laws, less likely to look at the UK and Canada and extremely unlikely to look at the USA. This has a lot to do with how far back it is since the "last common ancestor" of the law; the longer the corpus of law has been separated the more likely that the principles have diverged, partly this is cultural drift but mostly this is differences in statutes that actively modify the common law. Usually, jurisdictions within the same country are quite close to each other; partly due to common culture but often because of a genuine effort to "harmonise" laws across borders. There are occasions, however, where legislatures "steal" laws from other jurisdictions, in which case they often look to each other for early development of common law on those laws. For example, the Alberta (Canada) Builder's Lien Act 2000 and the NSW (Australia) Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 both address the same "wrong" and both had a common and parallel genesis pre-enactment; early cases in each jurisdiction were watched by the other.