Wills, Trusts, and Estates for Legal Assistants, Sixth Edition

Using an effective “learn by doing” approach, Wills, Trusts, and Estates for Legal Assistants emphasizes examples and applications, and includes hundreds of real life situations with detailed explanations. Students understand what the rules of law mean and how they apply in a real world context. The complete topic coverage introduces wills and trusts, intestate succession, estate administration, nonprobate transfers, and other estate planning issues such as taxes and malpractice. A balanced, experienced author team skillfully blends theory with practice and extensive pedagogy reinforces the text, with marginal terms and a glossary, ethical points, checklists, practice tips, and sample forms. The instructor's manual provides a summary of chapters, a model course outline, exam questions, assignment ideas, exercises, and a research guide for wills, trusts, and estates.

New to the Sixth Edition:

• The impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on federal income, gift, estate, and generation-skipping transfer taxes
• Rights and liabilities of same-sex spouses
• Electronic wills and access to a decedent’s digital assets
• Techniques for demonstrating testamentary capacity
• Directed trusts and trusts authorizing trustees to consider environmental, social, and governance factors in making investment decisions
• Modifying the terms of an irrevocable trust by “decanting”

Professors and students will benefit from:

• lively, lucid, and conversational style grabs and holds students’ interest
• learning-by-doing approach gives students a concrete grasp of abstract concepts
• Practice Tips guide students through the critical process of preparing and managing files
• flexible structure allows professors to follow the presentation of concepts in the book or organize the chapters to fit their syllabus