Will substitutes in the United States: an overview
| Autor | Thomas P. Gallanis |
| Páginas | 17-28 |
WILL SUBSTITUTES IN THE UNITED STATES:
AN OVERVIEW*
Thomas P. GALLANIS**
Allan D. VESTAL Chair in Law, University of Iowa
Visiting Professor (2017-2027), University of Chicago Law School
Visiting Professor (2019-2022), KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
1. INTRODUCTION TO WILL SUBSTITUTES IN U.S. LAW 1
In the United States, the time-honored way to transmit property at
death is by writing a valid will or by relying on the applicable statute(s)
of intestate succession. The court-supervised procedure to determine
whether a will is valid —or whether, instead, the decedent has died intes-
tate— is called «probate». The word «probate» —which, in English, can
function as a noun, a verb, or an adjective— derives from the Latin verb
probare, meaning «to prove», and its related parts of speech such as the
noun from the past participle probatum, meaning «a thing proved» 2. The
court in which the probate procedure occurs is known by various names,
depending on the U.S. jurisdiction: for example, it is a district court in
Iowa 3, a surrogate’s court in New York 4, or the probate division of a cir-
* An earlier version of this essay was delivered as a lecture at conferences on «Previsión y
transmisión intergeneracional del patrimonio al margen de la sucesión: encaje jurídico [¿y con-
solidación?] de los will substitutes en España» in Barcelona on December 10, 2019, and in Palma
de Mallorca on December 12, 2019. I am grateful to all of the conference organizers, especially
Professor Jaume TARABAL BOSCH and D. Ramon PRATDESABA RICART, for the invitation.
** Disclosure: I served as associate reporter for the Restatement Third of Trusts and currently
serve as executive director of the Uniform Law Commission’s Joint Editorial Board for Uniform
Trust and Estate Acts. In this essay, I speak in my individual capacity, not on behalf of the Ameri-
can Law Institute or the Uniform Law Commission.
1 For a fuller treatment of will substitutes, see Thomas P. GALLANIS, «Will-Substitutes: A
U.S. Perspective», in Alexandra BRAUN and Anne RÖTHEL (eds.), Passing Wealth on Death: Will-
Substitutes in Comparative Perspective (2016), on which this essay partly draws, and Thomas P.
GALLANIS, Family Property Law: Cases and Materials on Wills, Trusts, and Estates, 2-11, 335-408
(8th ed. 2020).
2 See Oxford English Dictionary s.v. «probate, n.» and «probate, v.».
3 See https://www.iowacourts.gov/iowa-courts/district-court.
4 See http://nycourts.gov/courthelp/WhenSomeoneDies/index.shtml.
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