Dick Wellman-A Personal Remembrance

Dick Wellman was my teacher, mentor, collaborator, colleague, and friend. My law school class at The University of Michigan Law School voted Dick the most enthusiastic member of the faculty, and he was that. Dick devoted his professional life to teaching and scholarship, as most law professors do, but he had another career: Dick was a key player in the Uniform Law Conference,' an organization dedicated to improving private law and promoting legislative uniformity among the states. Through his uniform law work, Dick literally changed the legal landscape in the area of trusts and estates.

His path breaking work as Chief Reporter for the Uniform Probate Code and work on many other uniform statutes has had profound influence on the law of trusts and estates, as much or more so than the work of any other member of his generation. Dick could scarcely visit any state in the union that did not have as part of its law, law that he invented and wrote. One of his great achievements was to make the probate process cheaper and more efficient in uncontested cases, anonymously easing the lives of thousands and thousands of grieving survivors.