Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Wills, Trusts, and Estates

The 1987 session of the General Assembly enacted legislation dealing with wills, trusts and estates that amended fourteen sections and added three new sections to the Code of Virginia (the "Code"). In addition to this legislation, there were five cases from the Virginia Supreme Court during the past year that involved issues of interest to both the general practitioner and the specialist in wills, trusts, and estates. This article reviews all of these legislative and judicial developments. In order to facilitate the discussion of numerous Code sections, they will be referred to in the text by their section numbers only which, unless otherwise stated, will be understood as always referring to the latest printing of the old sec- tions and to the 1987 supplement for the new sections.