Notes Toward a Truly Modern Wills Act

The formal requirements of our highly structured succession law frequently frustrate both the goals of decedents and the basic purposes of the law itself. In this article, Professor Gaubatz reviews the goals of succession law and the ways the law as currently structured fails to satisfy these goals. He discusses the ability of the Uniform Probate Code to resolve these insufficiencies pointing to the lack of flexibility in the Code to work changes in result where factual deviations indicate change is necessary. Concluding that basic substantive problems remain unresolved .by the Code, the author suggests increasing the flexibility of inheritance laws by providing for investigation into individual cases to ascertain the extent to which underlying succession law policy is fulfilled.

In addition, it is argued that many nontraditional forms of expression of testamentary intent be validated where the dispositive act is consistent with succession law policy. Finally, the author outlines how the proposed modifications would work in practice.